Elements of Chemistry, In a New Systematic Order, Containing All the Modern Discoveries

Lavoisier, Antoine

Published by Edinburgh: William Creech, 1790

About this Item

Robert Kerr (1755-1813) undertook this first English translation of Lavoisier's Traità elementaire de Chimie (Paris, 1789). Printing & the Mind of Man headlines the original edition as "A new epoch in chemistry." A more recent analysis pinpoints the importance of this book: "Lavoisier's most fundamental innovations transformed how one presents, how one argues, scientific knowledge and how, as a result, one develops and transmits it. The transformation of the terms and structures of scientific discussions had consequences beyond chemistry-consequences that Lavoisier himself did not foresee". W. C. Anderson, Between the library & the laboratory (John Hopkins, 1984). BOOK DETAILS AND CONDITION:ÂFirst Eng. Ed 8vo: 50, 511 (1) pp with 2 folding tables and 13 folding copper plates (Duveen and Klickstein pp 180-182) Cont. leather w/some wear, missing head and tail bands. Neville II p 24: Some alterations have been made in the tables in the appendix to accommodate the English reader: e.g., rules for converting French weights and measures are added and temperatures are given in degrees Fahrenheit. (See A. Greenberg, From Alchemy to Chemistry in Picture and Story, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2007, pp 309,310,316). Overall: VG. RARITY: Rare Book Hub shows eleven copies have sold in the last century. PROVENANCE:ÂSignatures of three past owners in book: Alfred Brunton 1843; Henry Hallett and Charles Lucy. This book was also owned by Arthur Greenburg. Henry Hallett shared the 1936 Nobel Prize in physiology for discovery of the role of acetylcholine in neural transmission. Greenburg is a well known historian of chemistry.

Seller Inventory # EBS100146

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Elements of Chemistry, In a New Systematic Order, Containing All the Modern Discoveries
• Publisher: Edinburgh: William Creech
• Publication Date: 1790
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
• Seller catalogs:
  • Chemistry
  • Classics of Science