Macquer. Pierre-Joseph

Macquer, Pierre-Joseph. Elements of the Theory and Practice of Chemistry, Translated by A. Reid. 2 vols. London, 1758. 

Macquer, Pierre Joseph. A Dictionary of Chemistry. Volume I. Printed for T. 

Macquer, Pierre Joseph (1718-1784) adjoint 1745, associe 1766, pensionnaire 1772... 

Macquer, Pierre-Joseph. Correspondance de Macquer, 2 vols. [Bibliotheque Nationale, manuscript section, f fr. 12305 and 12306]. 

Macquer, Pierre-Joseph, and Cadet de Gassicourt, Louis Claude, report on Berthollet s Memoire sur Pair fixe sulfureux tire de Phepatosulfuris. PV 97, 1778, 63v-66v (February 28). 

Macquer, Pierre-Joseph. Sur la cause de la difference dissolubilite des huiles dans Tesprit de vin. Memoires, 1745, 9-25. 

Macquer, Pierre-Joseph. Elemens de chimie—theorique (Paris J. T. Herissant, 1749) second edition (Paris P. F. Didot, 1756). 

Macquer, Pierre-Joseph. Art de la teinture en soie (Paris Desaint, 1763). Macquer, Pierre-Joseph. Dictionnaire de chymie, contenant la theorie la pratique de cette science, son application a la physique, a Vhistoire naturelle, a la medecine a Veconomie animale. Avec Vexplication detaillee de la vertu de la maniere d agir des medicamens chymiques et les principes fondamentaux des arts, manufactures metiers dependans de la chymie, 2 vols. (Paris Lacombe, 1766) second edition 4 vols. (Paris T. Barrois le jeune, 1778). Macquer, Pierre-Joseph. A Dictionary of Chemistry (London T. Cadell and P. Elmsly, 1771). 

Macquer, Pierre-Joseph. Resultat de quelques experiences faites sur le Diamant, par MM. Macquer, Cadet Lavoisier, lu a la Seance pubilque de TAcademie Royale des Sciences, 29 Avril, 1772. Introduction aux observations, II, 108-111 reprinted in Guerlac, Lavoisier, 199-204. 

Macquer, Pierre Joseph. 1749. Elemens de chymie theorique. Paris Jean-Thomas Heiissant. 

Macquer, Pierre Joseph and Antoine Baume. 1757. Plan d un cours de chymie experimentale et raisonnee avec un discours historique sur la chymie. Paris Jean-Thomas Herissant. 

Pierre Joseph Macquer (1718—84) was known as a pracdcal chemist (he supervised the royal porcelain factory, for instance). He wrote an influential dictionary (1766 revised in 1778), and he is best known for being a supporter of precisely the phlogiston theory that Lavoisier helped to overturn. 

Pierre-Joseph Macquer, a descendant of the Scottish nobility, was bom in Paris in 1718. Although he chose medicine as his profession, he devoted much time and thought to physical science, especially to chemistry. His Dictionary of Chemistry gives a comprehensive, scholarly, impartial view of all branches of eighteenth-century chemical technology. In his eulogy, Condorcet said, The spirit one observes in the works of M. Macquer is the same which directed his conduct. Everything about... 

Title Page of the German Edition of Macquer s Chemical Dictionary. Pierre-Joseph Maequer, 1718-1784, was one of the first chemists to investigate platinum. 

Two additional material principles were added to the tria prima in the seventeenth century to form the five-principle view that characterized the iatrochemistry until the middle of the eighteenth century, when the four Aristotelian elements returned largely through the influence of the French chemist Pierre-Joseph Macquer. Robert P. Multhauf has given a splendid account of these pre-modern years in The Origins of Chemistry. ... 

Chemical systems in those days were little more than assemblies of more or less independent rules and concepts, lacking the interdependent structure of a coherent system of concepts and practice we would today call a theory. The rejection of one part did not necessarily invalidate any of the others. This is certainly the case with the chemistry of Rouelle, whose teaching nonetheless colored the attitudes and writings of his pupils. The two major expressions of Rouelle s influence are found in the writings of Gabriel-Fran ois Venel (1723-1775), the principle contributor of the chemical articles in the Encyclopedie of Denis Diderot (1713-1784), and the textbook and Dictionary of Pierre-Joseph Macquer (1718-1784). 

Pierre-Joseph Macquers Elemens de chimie th orique, (1749) and Elemens de chimie practique (1751) became the first significant French successor to Nicholas Lemerys Cours de chymie, first published in 1675. Unlike earlier works it was an attempt to offer chemistry for its own sake, independent of medicine. It was intended for the absolute Novice in Chymistry to lead him from the most simple truths. .. to the most complex. Hence he begins with the elements, then moves on to saline substances (acids, alkalies, and their combinations) the volatile sulphureous spirit, sulphur, phosphorus, and the neutral salts, which have an earth or a fixed alkali for their bases. Then on to the metals, which are scarcely more compounded than the saline ... 

Perhaps because of this focus on actual practice, chemists did not write much directly on the question of continuity and discontinuity. Among those who did, the most prominent in the eighteenth century was Pierre-Joseph Macquer, who attempted a system of chemistry based on a set of rules of affinity (see Chapter Eight). His third rule, which Duncan says he inherited from Stahl, reads Substances that unite together lose some of their separate properties and the compounds resulting from their union partake of the properties of the substances which serve as their principles. 

Geoffroy s table was important, but it did not have many successors in the first half of the eighteenth century. There was one in 1730 and another in 1749. Perhaps French reluctance to identify rapports with attractions lay behind this lukewarm response. The second half of the century, however, saw a resurgence of interest in affinity tables, stimulated by an extremely influential textbook of 1749, Pierre Joseph Macquer s Elements of Theoretical Chemistry, which devoted a whole chapter to affinities ... 

Rouelle performed exceptionally well as a public and private lecturer by reconstructing the defunct theoretical discourse of French chemistry for the literary audience of the High Enlightenment. He did not fulfill, however, another function of the chemical teacher that of a textbook writer. It was one of Rouelle s early students, Pierre-Joseph Macquer,... 

Pierre-Joseph Macquer. Courtesy of Academic des Sciences Archive. 

Pierre-Joseph Macquer ushered in the Newtonian phase of French chemistry by characterizing affinity as attraction in his popular Dictionnaire de chymie (1766). Guyton de Morveau articulated a Newtonian program of affinity chemistry in the early 1770s. Berthollet carried this Newtonian interpretation of chemical affinity into the next century with his Essai statique de chimie (1803). 

L. J. M. Coleby, The Chemical Studies of P. J. Macquer (Allen C Unwin, 1938) W. A. Smeaton, Dictionary of Scientific Biography and Macquer et la medecine. Un aspect de sa vie qui necessite des recherches, Revue d histoire de la pharmacie 24, 1977, 251-254 Douglas McKie, Macquer, the first lexicographer of chemistry, Endeavour 16, 1957, 133-136 Willem C. Ahlers, Un Chimiste du XVIIIe si le Pierre-Joseph Macquer (1718-1784), doctoral thesis, ficole pratique des hautes fitudes, 1969 Claude Viel, Pierre-Joseph Macquer, Janus 73, 1986-1990, 1-27. 

W. C. Ahlers, P. J. Macquer et le rapport sur les Opuscules physiques et chimiques de Lavoisier, Actes de Xlle congres international d histoire des sciences (Paris, 1968), 5-9 idem, Un chimiste du XVIIIe siecle Pierre-Joseph Macquer (1718-1784), doctoral thesis, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, 1969,138-151 C. E. Perrin, Did Lavoisier Report to the Academy of Sciences on His Own Book. Isis 75, 1984, 343-348. 

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