FOURCROY (ANTOINE FRANCOIS de) ET (N.L.) VAUQUELIN - THE NAMING OF UREA.

Premiere (- Second) Mémoire Pour servir à l'histoire naturelle, chimique et médicale de l'urine humaine, Contenant quelques faits nouveaux sur son analyse et son altération spontanée, Lu le 11 frimaire an 7 (1799). - (Second Mémoire:) Dans lequel on s'occupe spécialement des propriétés de la materie particulière qui la caractérise, Lu les 16 et 21 fructidor an 7 (1799).

(Paris, Baudouin, AN XI (1803)). 4to. Without wrappers. Uncut. Extracted from "Mémoires de L'Institut National des Sciences et Arts", Tome Quatrieme. Pp. 363-466. A few minor brownspots on the first leaves, otherwise fine and clean, unopened.

First printing of this importent paper in the history of chemistry, in which the authors gave the first satisfactory account of of urea, which they named.

"Hundreds of concretions from various parts of human and animal bodies were analyzed by Fourcroy and Vauquelin. Most were urinary calculi which, independently of Wollaston, they classified according to chemical composition from 1798 onwards.They confirmed the frequent presence of uric acid and phiosphate of lime (discovered in calculi by Scheele and Georg Pearson respectively) and also found urate of ammonia, the double phosphate of magnesia and ammonia, and occasionally other compounds....In an attempt to find why urinary calculi were formed, Fourcroy and Vauquelin investigated urine, and in 1799 they gave (in the paper offered) the first satisfactory account of ures, which hey named....(they) isolated it by recrystallization from alcohol, and in 1808, achieved a purer state by adding alkali to the crystalline nitrate that they had discovered."(DSB V, p. 92-93).

Order-nr.: 42886