Septembeb 6, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



285 



ment. At the period in which these men 

 lived and worked, these industries could 

 with diiiiculty meet the demands of the ad- 

 vancing civilization, and that they were 

 profitable then, even as they were later, we 

 learn from the experience and writings of 

 Chaptal,* who was turned from the profes- 

 sion of teaching to establish at Montpellier, 

 as he tells us, large w'orks for the man- 

 ufacture of sulphuric, nitric, muriatic and 

 oxalic acids, alum, copperas, sal ammoniac, 

 sal Saturn, white lead and the preparations 

 of lead, mercury, etc. He declares that he 

 had made ' mountains of alum without be- 

 ing able to crystalize it,' until he had, 

 through the analysis of Eoman alum, de- 

 termined the presence of potash in the crys- 

 tallized product. And in order that he 

 might have proper apparatus for his works 

 he undertook the manufacture of the porce- 

 lain and pottery he required. A little later 

 he became interested in dyeing and calico 

 printing in a commercial way. How profit- 

 able this manufacture was maj^ be gathered 

 from the fact that after the political re- 

 verses which brought about his deposition 

 from the public life in Paris which had con- 

 sumed his entire fortune, he returned to his 

 manufacture at Montpellier and in a single 

 year realized from it a handsome net profit 

 of 350,000 francs. He further relates that, 

 encouraged by his success, other chemists 

 of France established large manufacturing 

 works and entered into their management. 

 He was closely associated with Lavoisier, 

 Berthelot, Monge, Fourcroy, Carny, Van- 

 dermonde, Guyton de Morveau and others 

 in the manufacture of gunpowder near 

 Paris, and his memoirs show that dur- 

 ing his residence at Montjjellier he was 

 in constant correspondence with the 

 chemists of Paris and elsewhere. Dubrun- 

 fautf states that at the instigation of the 

 . Comptroller-General, Turgot, the Academy 



* La Vie et I'Oeuvre de Chaptal. p. 31. • 

 tLe Sucre. II., 95, note. 



of Sciences of Paris offered a prize in 1776 

 for the invention of a method for the pro- 

 duction of niter and that Stahl and La- 

 voisier did not disdain to take an interest 

 in the subject of the prize. It amounted to 

 £3000 and was awarded to Thouvenel, who 

 was required, we are told, to justify experi- 

 mentally the theory of Lavoisier. At that 

 time Lavoisier was director of the Roj^al 

 Saltpeter Works. Berthollet* was inter- 

 ested in bleaching and dyeing, suggested 

 the use of chlorine for the former and in 

 1791 published a work entitled ' Elements of 

 the Art of Dyeing.' Guyton de Morveau f 

 was devoted to analytical and technical 

 chemistry, and among other things he 

 founded saltpeter works in 1773 and soda 

 works in 17S3. 



Much of the work, therefore, not only of 

 Chaptal but of other chemists of his time, 

 was doubtless done in response to demands 

 made upon them by the exigencies of the 

 manufactures, but how many of the results 

 they communicated to the journals and 

 learned societies flowed directly therefrom 

 we are not told. Certainly they could not 

 have failed to study closely the phenomena 

 thus offered for their observation and which 

 in many respects could not have been as 

 efficiently exhibited in any other way. 



So also, as we are told by Meyer | and 

 other historians, the earlier contributors to 

 the new science, Boyle, Kunkel, Bergmann, 

 Scheele, Margrafl', Macquer, Duhamel and 

 others, were largely devoted to the develop- 

 ment of certain chemical processes in the 

 industries. With all these men, the other 

 great leaders of the science M'ere closely as- 

 sociated ; the problems constantly arising 

 and the results obtained in their solution 

 were doubtless subjects of frequent dis- 



*Schaed]er, Handworterbuoh der wissensoliaftlich 

 bedeutenden Cliemiker. 



t Schaedler, Handworterbuch der wissenschaftlich 

 bedeutenden Chemiker. 



X Gesohichte der Chemie, Zweite Auflage, 1895. 



