Lavoisier's first major work

LAVOISIER, Antoine Laurent.

Opuscules physiques et chymiques...tome premier (all published).

Paris: Durand, Didot le jeune Esprit, 1774.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #001636

2 parts in one volume, 8vo (215 x 137 mm); the cancel leaves inserted at their correct places and not bound together after p. 434, 3 engraved plates, 19th century half leather, worn. A Duveen duplicate, with his bookplate on inner cover. ---

Duveen 339b (this copy); Duveen and Klickstein 121; Wellcome III, p. 460; Norman 1288. - FIRST EDITION OF LAVOISIER'S FIRST MAJOR WORK, a 'pioneer work' (Duveen and Klickstein), in which Lavoisier first expressed his doubts about the phlogiston theory. The first part contains an historical review of the experiments with gases of Lavoisier's predecessors. In part 2 Lavoisier records the quantitative experiments in combustion and calcination that he had carried out with great excitement during the previous year, and which had 'confirmed Lavoisier's suspicions that air, or some constituent of air, played an important role in the processes of combustion and calcination' (DSB).

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