VENEL, (GABRIEL FRANCOIS). - THE ANALYSIS OF SELTZER-WATER.

Mémoire sur L'Analyse des Eaux de Selters ou de Seltz. Première - (Seconde) Partie. (2 Mai 1750).

(Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1755). 4to. Extracts from "Mémoires fe Mathematique et de Physique, Présentés à l'Academie des Sciences par divers Savans", Tome II. Pp. 53-112. Clean and fine, wide-margined.

In these two memoirs Venel attempted to prove that effervescent mineral waters contain a quantity of common air in solution, thus seperating carbon dioxyde (he called it air surabondante) without knowing what it really was, thus beeing "so close to making a discovery without actually making it..." (Fourcroy).

"In 1750 Venel described his analysis of the effervescent mineral water of Selz, in Germany. Evaporation yielded only common salt and a little lime, and he was more interested in the effervescence, which was, he thought, caused by the escape of common air. All water contained a small amount of dissolved air, but Selzer and other effervescent waters contained superabundant air, as Venel called it. He made artificial Selzer water by adding the correct amounts of marine (hydrochloric) acid and soda to pure water, and he called the product aerated water, a term that is still in use. Stephen Hales had thought that effervescent mineral waters contained “sulphurous spirit"; Venel’s experiments proved the absence of the gas now called sulfur dioxide, but he failed to notice that the "superabundant air" differed in any way from common air. It was, of course, carbon dioxide, characterized in 1754 by Joseph Black, who called it fixed air. Fourcroy later commented that no one had ever been so close to making a discovery without actually making it as was Venel."(DSB).

Order-nr.: 44935