Substances metalliques

Rene Fric, Contribution a I etude de revolution des idees de Lavoisier sur la nature de Fair et sur le calcination des metaux, Arch. Int. d Hist. Sci. 12 (1959) 137-168. This paper printed three previously unpublished manuscripts by Lavoisier. The first is titled Essay sur la nature de Fair, and is dated only by the note of Pouchy, the permanent secretary of the Royal Academy, on 19 August 1772 the second has the same title and is dated in Lavoisier s own hand as 15 April 1773 the third, Sur une nouvelle theorie de la calcination et de la reduction des substances metalliques sur la cause de Faugmentation de poids quelles aquirent au feu et sur differens phenomenes qui appartiennent a Fair fixe carries no date, but Fric assigns as probable 21 April 1773. Quotation from the second Fric Memoire, 150. 

Lavoisier, Sur la precipitation des substances metalliques les unes par les autres, Oeuvres de Lavoisier, vol. 2, 528-545 at 529-530. DK-71. For more details on this point, see Robert Siegfried, Lavoisier and the Phlogistic Connection, Ambix 36 (1989) 31-40. 

Lavoisier, Sur une nouvelle Theorie de la Calcination et de la Reduction des substances metalliques sur la cause de laugmentation de poids quelles acquierent au feu et sur differens phenomenes qui appartiennent a I air fixe [Fonds Lavoisier, 1303] printed in Fric, Contribution, 155-162. See also Holmes s discussion in The Next Crucial year, 30-40. 

Lavoisier, Memoire sur la precipitation des substances metalliques les unes par les autres, Oeuvres, volume 2, 528-545. 

There is, of course, no reason to assume that chemists regarded a metal—say, the copper used in salt formations—to be different from the copper used in metallurgical processes. Thus, the substances metalliques doubtlessly also represented all metals on the right hand side of the table, provided they formed salts with acids. Neither is there reason to doubt that the chemists of the age classified metals into one taxonomic unit in other contexts. Rather, the interesting point here is that one cannot be sure whether or not the table acmaUy represented such a general class of metals. 

Geoffroy 1718 Sets alcalis volatiles Sets alcalis fixes Terres absorbantes Substances metalliques... 

Macquer 1766 Alcali volatil Alcali fixe Bases terreuses Substances metalliques... 

Memoire sur I acide du Phosphore et sur ses combinaisons avec differ-entes substances salines terreuses et metallique (draft memoire of October 20, 1772) [Lavoisier dossier 1308D] printed in Guerlac Lavoisier, 224-227. 

Lavoisier, Memoire sur I affinite du principe oxygine avec les differentes substances auxquelles il est susceptible de s unir, Oeuvres, volume 2, 546-556, at 546 (emphasis added). It was deposited at the Academy on Deccember 20, 1783, along with the Sur les dissolutions metalliques, but read on March 2 and 5, 1785. 

The production of these salts from certain metal oxides may have been one of the reasons for replacing the name chawc metalliques (metal calces) with the name oxides metalliques. (See Guyton de Morveau et al. [1787] p. 55f.) At least some contemporaries recognized in oxides metalliques not only a reference to the composition of the substances in question, but also an allusion to the acids in the German edition of the Methode, oxide is rendered with Halbsdure (semi-acid). See Guyton de Morveau et al. [1793] pp. 56 and 82. 

See 241 of Beigman [1783] p. 114. Whether these specific metallic calces could be reduced to one common calx or must be regarded as distinct calces was a disputed question up to the second half of the eighteenth century see Kopp [1966] vol. Ill p. 142f. and Cassebaum and Kauffman [1976] p. 4S0f. It was also an open question whether the metafile calces must be distributed into the class of metallic substances or into that of the earths. For many chemists regarded these calces as a particular earth—see, for instance, the article chaux metallique in Macquer [1766]. 

VII, 179, 194 il est a presumer que les terres cesseront bientot d etre comptees au nombre des substances simples. . . peut-etre des oxides metalliques oxygenees jusqu a un certain point. 

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