| OCR Text |
Show 201 (l743-l794) who was also a student of Rouelle. He did nevertheless exert a good influence on chemistry through his lectures and writing. His book Elémens de Chymie Theorique appeared in l749, and it differed from previous books by presenting chemistry as an independent branch of science rather than as an adjunct to pharmacology and medicine. Two years later his Elémens de Chymie-Practique appeared, and in l756 he published a lSOO page edition of the two books combined. A number of English translations of these books were soon issued, some published in London and others in Edinburgh. His most famous publication, Diction- naire de Chymie, in two volumes, appeared in T766, and was really an encyclOpaedia rather than a dictionary. It was followed by later ed- itions and also by English, German, Danish and Italian translations. All of Macquer's teaching and writing was distinguished by clear and logical presentation, and established him as the leading authority on ' chemistry of his time. The first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica was published in Edinburgh in l769-l77l. Its article on chemistry, which accepted the phlogiston theory, antedated Lavoisier's famous Traite Elementaire de Chimie, the first non-phlogiston book, by l8 years. R. w. Gable has recently pointed out that this article, with no proper acknowledgements, is taken almost word for word, with even the original illustrations, from Elements of the Theory and Practice of Chemistry one of the translations of Macquer's l756 book. Although copyright laws were first formulated in the seventeenth century they had no international application in the eighteenth, and literary piracy of this kind was not uncommon . |
