An essay on combustion, with a view to a new art of dying and painting : wherein the phlogistic and antiphlogistic hypotheses are proved erroneous / by Mrs. Fulhame.

  • Fulhame, Mrs. (Elizabeth), active 1780-1810.
Date:
1810
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on combustion, with a view to a new art of dying and painting : wherein the phlogistic and antiphlogistic hypotheses are proved erroneous / by Mrs. Fulhame. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    ly is, although in some degree counteracted by the concluding paragraph, cannot but be esteemed a strong proof of the merit of the opinions here ad- vanced ; and as a tacit avowal, of the inadequacy of the usually received explanation, in accounting for the phenomena under consideration. Convinced by the forcible arguments and experi- ments of the decomposition of water being essential in all the processes here detailed, and considering the subject much simplified by the exposition given; I cannot but think the same reasoning would apply in many other cases, where some of the most active and energetic agents, are, by the present explanation, altogether thrown into the back ground. Thus, in procuring nitrogen gas from muscular flesh by means of diluted nitric acid, we are told, that the nitric acid does not furnish the nitrogen gas is obvious, from its saturating after its action as large a quantity of alkali as before; consequently it could not have suffer- ed any decomposition.* That this deduction is not in the true spirit of chemical philosophy, which looks to the action of affinity, by which decomposition, and recomposition may at the same time progress, I have little hesitation in saying; and that the case adverted to is a compound, and not a simple play of affinity must be allowed, or we entirely destroy the agency * Accum's Syst, of Chemistry, Vol. I. p. 047. 2d Eng. Ed.