200 Biography of F>er:ch'<ts. 



intercourse with Hisinger to enter on the ehemieo-mincralogi- 

 cal, and, finally, by his professional position to engage in those 

 on animal chemistry. Towards the end of the first decennium, 

 however, he was led, especially by the investigations of Davy, 

 to the study of the simple chemical proportion sin which bodies 

 generally combine with each other, and from this time ap- 

 plied all his energies to this subject. The activity which he 

 now developed, under the guiding influence of a great idea, 

 w as in fact gigantic ; for, after the lapse of only a few years, 

 he established, to the amazement of his contemporaries, the 

 complete theory of combining proportions, a subject the 

 details of which he laboured constantly in perfecting and 

 improving during the remainder of his life. It may safely 

 be affirmed, that it was only from this time that che- 

 mistry became in truth one of the exact sciences ; for from 

 the collection of empirical facts which had hitherto borne 

 the name of chemistry, the universal law now first developed 

 itself, according to which bodies enter into chemical com- 

 bination. 



Berzelius is not, properly speaking, the first discoverer of 

 the doctrine of chemical proportions. It generally happens 

 in all sciences that great laws are not suddenly discovered 

 by one investigator, but are gradually recognised.* 



******* 



During the previous century chemists who had occupied 

 themselves with the phenomena of the so-called chemical 

 affinity, made several observations which incontrovertibly 

 proved that there was a strict uniformity and order in the 

 chemical combination of bodies. These men were especially 

 Bergman in Sweden, Kirwan in Dublin, Wenzel in Dresden, 

 and, above all, Richter in Berlin. The latter two had indeed 

 come to the conclusion, that acids and alkaline bodies must 

 combine in definite proportions, because in the double de- 

 composition of neutral salts neutral products are formed. 



* Owing to the great indistinctness of the MS., a long sentence, which ap- 

 pears very involved and confused, is left out. The want of it, however, does 

 imt affect the sense of the text. 



