Beschreibung:

LAVOISIER, Antoine-Laurent (1743-1794). Traité élémentaire de chimie, présenté dans un ordre nouveau, et d'après les découvertes modernes. Paris: [Chardon] for Cuchet, 1789.
LAVOISIER, Antoine-Laurent (1743-1794). Traité élémentaire de chimie, présenté dans un ordre nouveau, et d'après les découvertes modernes. Paris: [Chardon] for Cuchet, 1789. 2 volumes, 8° (198 x 119 mm). 13 engraved folding plates by and after Paulze Lavoisier, woodcut head- and tailpieces by Papillon, 2 folding letterpress tables in vol. I, 2-page errata at end. (Plates generally clean, some spotting and browning to text of both volumes. Vol I: K8 with tear at bottom margin, the two tables browned, without blank X2 at end. Vol. II: corner of half-title and X3 torn away, Cc7 with burn hole, Mm8 laid down, Ss1 with small paper defect at upper margin, last plate slightly soiled at margin.) Contemporary French mottled calf gilt, covers with triple fillet, flat gilt spine with repeated urn design, red speckled edges (joints rubbed and somewhat cracked). Provenance : J. Gr é au, a gift to his father (contemporary inscription on front free endpaper). FIRST EDITION, second issue, marking the overthrow of phlogiston theory. The second issue contains tables and several extracts from the registers of the Academie des Sciences and other learned societies, not included in the single-volume first or trial issue, of which only two copies are known. The ‘culmination of Lavoisier's achievement’ the Traité was ‘neither a general reference work nor a technical monograph’ but ‘a succinct exposition of Lavoisier’s discoveries (and those of his disciples) and an introduction to the new way of approaching chemistry.’ Although it formed a dramatic conclusion to his life’s work, it contained important material not hitherto published, ‘notably his pioneer experiments on the combustion analysis of organic compounds and on the phenomenon of alcoholic fermentation, which impressed him as “one of the most striking and the most extraordinary” effects observed by the chemist’ (DSB VIII, pp. 81-82). Dibner, Heralds 43; Duveen and Klickstein 126; Grolier/Horblit, Science 64; Honeyman 1942; PMM 238; Norman 1295; Wellcome III, p.460.