Category: Uncategorized

CENTRALIZED SCIENCE. (Laurent). “Not only was he stuck far from where things were happening, but the university structure of France was set up so that research was really supported only in Paris. According to official instructions, the laboratories of provincial universities were designated strictly for class preparation. Private research by professors was, if not out and out prohibited, at least frowned upon and not at all supported.” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00026980.2020.1867786 View in LinkedIn

EMERGENCE OF ORGANIC CHEMISTRY. “For them, “active principles” was not a reference to active matter, but to the particular molecule within a natural substance that was responsible for its action on the animal economy. In each case, chemists had worked out the chemical formula of these molecules – the amount of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen that formed the truly foundational principles upon which everything was built. It was a triumph of the new field of organic chemistry.” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00026980.2020.1867786 View in LinkedIn

CHEMICAL FORMULAE. “Fourcroy was insistent that “Almost all vegetable substances are composed of three primitive principles known as hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. It’s by the diverse proportions of these three principles that the various plant materials differ.” The goal of the new pharmacy was to place vegetable chemistry on the same footing as mineral chemistry by accounting for its materials in terms of their elemental composition.” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00026980.2020.1867786 View in LinkedIn

IMPACT OF BOOZE AND GUNS. “Alcohol was not the only plant substance altering bodies in France in the years after the Revolution. The circulation of medicinal plants and drugs remained robust. With the abolition of apothecary guilds during the Revolution, the regulation of trade now fell to the profession of pharmacy, newly institutionalised by a group closely allied to Lavoisier, most notably the chemist Antoine François Fourcroy (1755-1809), who had established, along with Lavoisier, the new chemical nomenclature.” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00026980.2020.1867786 View in LinkedIn

RETURN OF VITALISM. “For Chaptal, fermentation was not, as Lavoisier had suggested, a straightforward chemical reaction, but a living process. He identified four components of the grape that played a role: water, tartaric acid, sugar, and what he started out calling a “sweet principle” (principe doux), and later switched to calling the “vegeto-animal principle.” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00026980.2020.1867786 View in LinkedIn

STEPS BACKWARD. “Wine makers and distillers found little of use in Lavoisier’s work, and instead turned to another chemist of his generation, who was only partially converted to Lavoisier’s cause, the unapologetic vitalist Jean-Antoine Chaptal (1756-1832). Chaptal had replaced Lavoisier at the Gunpowder Administration after the latter’s beheading, and then served as Napoleon’s Minister of the Interior. He had also, in these years, published scientific accounts of both wine making and distilling that transformed both industries.” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00026980.2020.1867786 View in LinkedIn

LOST HIS HEAD BUT HIS IDEAS REMAINED. “Although Lavoisier did not survive the Revolution that followed, his new nomenclature did, cementing a shift that deprived active principles of their fundamental ontological status. But a focus on the constituent elements remained insufficient to explain what was, for many, the most interesting part of fermented beverages.” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00026980.2020.1867786 View in LinkedIn