ESSAI SUR LA THEORIE DES PROPORTIONS CHIMIQUES ET SUR L'INFLUENCE CHIMIQUE DE L'ELECTRICITE

Paris, France: Chez Mequignon-Marvis, 1819. First French Edition. Leather-bound. Very Good. Octavo. Tree calf (8" x 5") , Once halfbound. Corners reinforced with green leather(?). Replacement label 5 7/8", along spine, in contrasting red, ruled and lettered in gilt). Light foxing throughout. Bears bookplate of Chandler Dymock Ingersoll to front pastedown, and inscription/signature to"__________July 1995, from B. Quaritch, London". Scarce first edition in French of the third part of Larbox i kemien, the earliest translation into any language of any part of this great textbook in chemistry. Jons Jacob Berzelius (1779 - 1848) was a Swedish chemist considered (along with others such as Boyle, Dalton and Lavoisier) to be one of the founders of modern chemistry, whose "enduring contributions were in the fields of electrochemistry, chemical bonding, and stoichiometry...he is noted for his determination of atomic weights and..." contributions to the field of stoichiomtry, the "branch of chemistry pertaining to the quantitative relationships between elements in chemical compounds and chemical reactions that these..." incur. He was among the first to articulate the differences between inorganic compounds and organiccompounds..." and is 'credited with discovering cerium and selenium, and with being the first to isolate silicon and thorium. Finally, Berzelius essentially "...invented the system of chemical notation still used today, the main difference being that instead of the subscript numbers used today (e.g., H2O or Fe2O3), Berzelius used superscripts (H2O or Fe2O3). (LIfted from Wikipedia).

"It was published in Paris during the chemist's one-year stay there. In this work Berzelius developed his dualistic theory, by which he believed that he had explained the long discussed problem of the nature of the affinity that held chemical substances together. This was the major synthesis of his career. He declares in the Essai that "every chemical combination is wholly and solely dependent on two opposing forces, positive and negative electricity, and every chemical compound must be composed of two parts combined by the agency of their electrochemical reaction, since there is no third force..." (RBH, quoting auction record 5084-25).