Thomas Beddoes to Joseph Black, 6 November 1787
London Novr 6th 1787
N° 32 Fleet Street
Dear Sir
The want of some tolerable manual of chemistry & the increasing ardour for the pursuit of that science at Oxford & I believe every where else induced me to promise to attempt something of the kind myself. I did not fail to perceive the various difficulties of such an undertaking at the time & they have become more numerous the more I have reflected on the subject. I have collected all the modern elementary books, which are not a few, especially the German, but I find no assistance for the method which constitutes the chief difficulty of such a work. We seem to me to have arrived at that period of chemical knowledge when the necessity of a new arrangement appears evident without being possessed of sufficient information to discern clearly what that arrangement ought to be. Before your discovery of fixed air the acids were entitled to the first or at least to the second place, on account of the simplicity of their composition & because they were the principal agents in the operations of chemistry. In consequence of the direction which that discovery gave to the pursuits of Nat. Philosophers many aeriform substances wch had before eluded the senses were submitted to expt & though many curious facts were ascertained, they remained in great measure solitary, their connection with the phenomena that had been formerly observed was unperceived & the lecturer or the writer was left to introduce them where he cd most conveniently without disarranging his ancient system. By degrees it was perceived that the new SS were of too much importance to act the part of insignificant accessories; their claims to higher stations began to introduce disorder into the old arrangement & many, I believe, considering them as unwelcome intruders, began to despair altogether of the theory of Chemistry.
But the light which has been afforded by the recent discoveries of Mr Cavendish, Mr Lavoisier, Berthollet & some others, seems to me to suggest better hopes, except to those who have had the folly or the misfortune to fix their opinions inalterably. These discoveries lead to three important changes, to the rejection of phlogiston, 2 consequently no longer to consider inflammable bodies as containing one common principle (which, with other considerations too long to be mentioned here leads me to reject destroy the class) & 3rdly to place the elastic fluids or the greatest part of them before the acids immediately after the doctrine of heat. I wd not make a class of elastic fluids any more than of inflammable. That state as you have taught us depends upon the combination of fire; & the qualities of the body which was before solid or liquid may be < very> different in other respects though they may agree in having that < such an> attraction for fire as to enable them to retain enough to keep their particles at a certain distance from each other, which is all that is essential to the aeriform state.
I do not expect that you & some other philosophers will approve of these changes immediately on hearing them mentioned, perhaps not after considering the arguments I have to advance in favour of them. I shall indeed be very far from satisfying myself. I only hope to propose a plan which by gradual improvements may comprehend the new discoveries. You will allow I dare say, that we have none at present, which is capable of doing this. For the rest I wd adopt the order of your lectures entirely, as after much comparison & reflection I do not think it possible to have contrived a way of presenting the facts relating to chemistry that were known at that time more clearly & scientifically. But till the science shall be rendered perfect, successive changes of method will be requisite, for as new SS or new qualities of SS already known are detected they will require to be arranged somewhere; by which means the former order will be more or less disturbed in proportion to the quantity & importance of the new matter to be introduced.
There remains still a difficulty which at present appears to me more insuperable than that of arrangement, I mean, the system of denomination, I know not whether you have seen the nouvelle Nomenclature chymique, which is the production of the ablest heads in France. I think they have been very far from successful in all cases or, if they have, that it will be impossible to introduce a corresponding nomenclature into our language. As an example of the first objection, I may mention ‘azote’, the denomn of phlogistd air, which is not as far as we know more pernicious to life than other gases, whatever the French chemists may pretend, & which therefore is not properly distinguished by this appellation. Again, ‘Potasse’ is the new name for veg. alkali, but how can one adopt it in English, when it is already appropriated to another substance. The distinction of the difft states of the same and by difft terminations will also be excessively hard & difficult in English.
I intend to print what I have to say upon these subjects along with the first part of my syllabus, which I hope will be ready by the beginning of March. With your permission I will publish it in the form of a letter to you. In the mean time I wish I cd induce you to reflect a little on the subject & to favour me with a few lines upon it.
I am just returned from the continent, where I have picked up some news; but I find that I have not room enough left to set down any of it.
I am Dear Sir
Yours respectfully
Thos Beddoes
PS. Having just procured a cover, I can add, that you will find some very capital memoirs of Berthollet in the next vol. of the Mem: Paris (for 1785) Among other things he has given a compleat analysis of volatile alkali. Van Marum has just published a 2nd vol. of his expts with his great electrical machine & there are several of them which have weighed very much with me in inducing me to reject phlogiston; particularly the calcination of metals in nitrous air. I sent Dr Hutton’s theory of rain to Morveau at Dijon & he was very much pleased with it; & I afterwards gave it to Lavoisier; I am very sorry I had not at that time a copy of his theory of the earth. If he has a copy left & wd sent it to me at Murray’s N° 32 Fleet Street, I will undertake to forward it to Lavoisier. Mr Lumsden told me he had brought it to Paris; but I suppose that was only the abstract; none of the French Philosophers with whom I conversed know any thing of it.
You may procure a copy of the nouvelle nomenclature chymique from Elmsly if you have not one already. The continuation of Morveau’s dictionary will be published in the course of the winter; Madame Lavoisier has translated Kirwan's book on Phlogiston, to which several of the best chemists add their notes. Mr Cavendish has abandoned phlogiston & I think we are all here about to turn our backs on poor Stahl.
MS: Edinburgh University Library, Gen 875/111/52–53
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