874 



tained for him, that notwithstanding his firm and unsparing criticisms 

 on the labours of others, he was rarely involved in scientific con- 

 troversy of a personal nature. 



The mere enumeration of the labours of Berzelius, to whom as an 

 individual Chemistry is indebted for a larger and more varied store of 

 new facts and observations than have ever before been collected by 

 one man, would involve a sketch of the history of Chemistry in its 

 more important phases during the last forty years. We must there- 

 fore content ourselves with mentioning a few of the more important 

 topics that engaged his attention. 



Some of his earliest papers related to the physiological and che- 

 mical actions of the Voltaic pile, then recently discovered, and en- 

 grossing the attention of all philosophers. The most important of 

 these researches were connected with the decomposition of the alka- 

 line earths, by forming their amalgams, and included the discovery 

 of that singular substance the amalgam of ammonium, in which the 

 two gases hydrogen and nitrogen unite with mercury and form a 

 compound which still retains the metallic character. From these 

 researches he was led to his Electro- chemical theoiy, the foundation 

 of which was laid by Davy, but which received many important mo- 

 difications, and a systematic application to chemical combination in 

 general, from the hands of Berzelius. In the year 1806, he, in con- 

 junction with Hisinger, commenced a publication at regular intervals, 

 entitled ' Memoirs in Physics, Chemistry and Mineralogy,' composed 

 of papers of great interest and importance in each of these branches 

 of science. This work was continued for twelve years, and contains 

 no fewer than forty-seven original papers from the pen of Berzelius. 

 Shortly after appeared his remarkable work 'Lectures on Animal 

 Chemistry,' a treatise which abounds in original observations, and 

 which gave form to a branch of the science at once the most difficult 

 and least understood. This work furnishes a variety of new modes 

 of analysis, and details the experimental examination of most of the 

 secretions, of the chemical composition of which till then little or 

 nothing was known. 



It was indeed in the prosecution of analysis generally that the 

 consummate skill of Berzelius was eminently conspicuous. Analy- 

 tical chemistry may be said to have originated in Sweden under 

 Bergman ; but it was entirely remodelled by Berzelius, who intro- 

 duced a variety of new methods and a degree of precision and cer- 

 tainty into its operations which were before unknown. 



Whilst Dalton was pursuing the train of investigation which led 

 to his celebrated atomic hypothesis, Berzelius, in ignorance of the 

 views of our countryman, was labouring in the same track ; and in 

 following up the experiments of Wenzel and of Richter, the import- 

 ant bearings of which he at once recognized, had been led to the 

 performance of a number of exact analyses, which completely con- 

 firmed the happy generalizations of Dalton. 



These results he published in an ' Essay on the Doctrine of Definite 

 Proportions.' The masterly style in which the subject was treated 

 contributed in no small degree to the rapid adoption of these new 



