The early history of chlorine : papers / by Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1774), C.L. Berthollet (1785), Guyton de Morveau (1787), J.L. Gay-Lussac and L. J. Thenard (1809).

Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The early history of chlorine : papers / by Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1774), C.L. Berthollet (1785), Guyton de Morveau (1787), J.L. Gay-Lussac and L. J. Thenard (1809). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    in hand, it is perhaps permissible to call the attention of any chemists who use the expression “radicle” to the historical authority for “ radical ” contained in the second paragraph of the extract. The extracts from Gay-Lussac and Thenard bring us to the time of Davy. These three investigators were simultaneously engaged in investigating the properties of chlorine and hydrochloric acid, and endeavouring to isolate the radical. Before long, Davy concluded that chlorine contained no oxygen, but was itself an element; this view was not adopted by his rivals till considerably later. Nevertheless, it is sometimes claimed that Gay- Lussac and Thenard first established the elementary nature of chlorine. This claim is apparently founded on the statement at the end of the paper now reprinted (p. 48). That it is not justified is clearly shewn by the extract from their “ Physico-chemical Researches ” given at the end of the present volume. As in the other translations of the Alembic Club Reprints, the endeavour has been to give a fairly accurate reproduction of the author’s language rather than an elegant version. H. M.