BY FREDRICK ACCUM.

Operative Chemist, Lecturer on Practical Chemistry, and on Mineralogy
and Pharmacy; Late Chemical Operator in the Royal
Institution of Great Britain.

WITH AN APPENDIX,

-CONTAINING

A VIEW OF THE LATE DOCTRINES AND DISCOVERIES

IN CHEMISTRY.

BY THOMAS COOPER, ESQUIRE,

Professor of Chemistry at Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania,

VOLUME I.

PHILADELPHIA :

PUBLISHED BY KIMBER AND CONRAD,

NO. 93, MARKET-STREET.

Merritt, printer.

1814.

District of Pennsylvania, to wit:

BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the seventeenth day of December in the thirty-eighth year of the independence of the United States of America, A. D. 1813, Kimber and Conrad of the said district, have de posited in this office the title of a book the right whereof they claim ́as proprietors in the words following, to wit:

System of Theoretical and Practical Chemistry. In two volumes, with plates. By Fredrick Accum, Operative Chemist, Lecturer on Practical Chemistry, and on Mineralogy and Pharmacy; late Chemical Operator in the Royal Institution of Great Britain. With an Appendix, containing a view of the late Doctrines and discoveries in Chemistry. By Thomas Cooper, Esquire, Professor of Chemistry at Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

In conformity to the act of the congress of the United States, intituled, "An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times therein mentioned." And also to the act, entitled, "An act supplementary to an act, entitled "An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times therein mentioned," and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints""

D. CALDWELL,

Clerk of the District of Pennsylvania.

PREFACE.

11, Old Compton-street, Soho.

THE following treatise has been composed for the instruction of such as are actually unacquainted with chemical science; and with that view I have followed such an arrangement of the subjects, as appeared best calculated to afford a clear and permanent knowledge of their relations and consequences.

As the proofs of chemistry are grounded upon an appeal to the senses, I have in the first place described some experiments, which are easy to be performed, and particularly adapted to exhibit the general nature of chemical action.

But mere facts do not constitute a science. The reasoning faculty must be exerted to dispose them in the order of cause and effect; first by the method called analysis, and afterwards in that of synthesis: which last may be considered as including those tentative processes of the mind called hypotheses, which in natural science are rendered legitimate by experiment.

To announce those generalities which have been deduced from the analytical labours of former philosophers, and constitute the theory of the science; to exhibit the conditions of the mutual actions of bodies; and to place the student upon an eminence whence he may contemplate the phenomena with advantage, and in many cases foretel events with certainty; require a display of the nature of chemical attraction, or affinity, and of heat. I have distinctly stated the laws of affinity in the synthetical form, and have then proceeded to illustrate those laws, by a series of experiments sufficiently striking, to interest the mind and fix the doctrine in the memory. The same method is adopted with regard to heat and light; which, together with attraction and repulsion, constitute the causes of every chemical change.

These positions and their illustrative proofs are immediately followed by the classification of the simple or undecompounded bodies, with their attributes, affections, or habitudes; which latter are proved experimentally.

The gases and the theory of their formation are next considered; their characteristic properties are detailed; the processes for obtaining them described; and a variety of the most appropriate experiments explained, by applying the general doctrines to each particular fact. Among these important first lines of chemistry, the formation of water; the production of various acids; the nature of the air we breathe; eudiometry; combustion; and many phenomena of the utmost magnitude

"

and value present themselves, and are elucidated by experiments.

The metals, alkalies, earths, &c. next succeed, and are treated in the same manner by direct reference to the facts they afford during chemical examination. The natural history of each, and their obvious physical and chemical properties, are first stated; then follow the means of obtaining them; and lastly, their physico-chemical properties are shown, by a series of experiments. A similar method pervades the whole of the work.

I have endeavoured experimentally to unfold all the fundamental truths of the science. I have proceeded from first notions step by step; from generals to particulars; from premises to conclusions; deducing causes from their effects, and effects from their causes, in order to maintain a systematic connection between the several parts of the whole, and to recal to the memory all the changes which bodies are susceptible of in their mutual actions.

I am persuaded this cannot be better done than by determining their properties by experiments under different circumstances. Hence the same facts are exhibited under various forms and relations, in order to oblige the mind to re-consider the same phenomena in different lights.

It is perhaps needless to state, that I have availed myself of all the authors who have cultivated and enriched