CHAPTER IV.
ESTABLISHMENT OF GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CHEMICAL SCIENCE (continued)—PERIOD OF DAVY AND BERZELIUS.
Humphry Davy, 1778-1829. Johann Jacob Berzelius, 1779-1848.
We may roughly date the period of chemical advance during which the connections between chemistry and other branches of natural knowledge were recognized and studied, as beginning with the first year of this century, and as continuing to our own day.
The elaboration of the atomic theory was busily carried on during the second and third decades of this century; to this the labour of the Swedish chemist Berzelius largely contributed.
That there exist many points of close connection between chemical and electrical science was also demonstrated by the labours of the same chemist, and by the brilliant and impressive discoveries of Sir Humphry Davy.
A system of classification of chemical elements and compounds was established by the same great naturalists, and many inroads were made into the domain of the chemistry of bodies of animal and vegetable origin.
The work of Berzelius and Davy, characterized as it is by thoroughness, clearness and definiteness, belongs essentially to the modern era of chemical advance; but I think we shall better preserve the continuity of our story if we devote a chapter to a consideration of the work of these two renowned naturalists before entering on our review of the time immediately preceding the present, as typical workers in which time I have chosen Liebig and Dumas.
In the last chapter we found that the foundations of the atomic theory had been laid, and the theory itself had been applied to general problems of chemical synthesis, by Dalton. In giving, in that chapter, a short sketch of the modern molecular theory, and in trying to explain the meaning of the term "molecule" as contrasted with "atom," I necessarily carried the reader forward to a time considerably later than the first decade of this century. We must now retrace our steps; and in perusing the account of the work of Berzelius and Davy given in the present chapter, the reader must endeavour to have in his mind a conception of atom analogous to the mental picture formed by Dalton (see pp. 135, 136); he must regard the term as applicable to element and compound alike; he must remember that the work of which he reads is the work of those who are striving towards a clear conception of the atom, and who are gradually rising to a recognition of the existence of more than one order of small particles, by the regular putting together of which masses of matter are constituted.
No materials, so far as I am aware, exist from which a life of Berzelius can be constructed. I must therefore content myself with giving a mere enumeration of the more salient points in his life. Of his chemical work abundant details are fortunately to be found in his own "Lehrbuch," and in the works and papers of himself and his contemporaries.