In existographies, Louis Lemery (1677-1743) (CR:4) was a French physician and chemist noted for his 1709 “Conjectures and Reflections on the Matter of Fire and on the Light” in which, building on the previous burning glass experimental work and matter of heat (igneous particle) theories of Dutch chemist Wilhelm Homberg (1652-1715), he reconceptualized the “particles of fire” view in the form of a universal solvent for calcination and combustion processes by drawing an explicit analogy with the action of water as a solvent in regards to salts. [1] Lemery stated: [2]
“The matter of fire is the first and the most powerful solvent of earthly bodies; we have no other agent that penetrates as deeply and disunites the essential substances as perfectly.”
He argued that fire, functioning as a solvent, was a “fluid of certain nature”.
Family
Louis Lemery was the son of Nicolas Lemery (1645-1715), an Eduard Farber (1961) ranked greatest chemist, noted for his geometrically-locking acid-base model of corpuscles. [3]
Fixed fire
Lemery articulated a detailed mechanism for the fixation of fire in bodies. Often, according to Lemery’s model, fire became imprisoned (fixed) in solid bodies rather than dissolving them. Two repercussions of this model were: firstly, that that the matter of fire enclosed in a solid body increased markedly the weight of the body; second, it preserved during the entire duration of captivity its particular properties, which became evident when it escaped its prison.
Lemery justified this model by virtue of the fact that all the world knew, according to him, that several metallic matters, including the regulus of antimony, lead, tin, and even mercury, gained weight when exposed to fire; though they lost much of their proper substance during the operation.
Influence
Lemery’s work, according to Korean-born American affinity chemistry historian Mi Gyung Kim, was said to have set the stage for the latter phlogiston theories models, such as Guillaume-Francois Rouelle and Pierre Macquer who identified phlogiston as “fixed fire.” Swedish chemist Herman Boerhaave also cited Lemery as being influential to his theories on heat. [2]
References
1. Lemery, Louis. (1709). “Conjectures and Reflections on the Matter of Fire and on Light” (“Conjectures & Reflexions sur la Matiere du Feu ou de la Lumier”), PV 28, 1709, 445r-457v (December 20); Memoires, 1709, 400-418.
2. Kim, Mi Gyung. (2003). Affinity, That Elusive Dream – A Genealogy of the Chemical Revolution (Louis Lemery, pgs. 115-18). MIT Press.
3. Farber, Eduard. (1961). Great Chemists. Interscience Publishers.
Further reading
● Kim, Mi Gyung. (2008). “The ‘Instrumental’ Reality of Phlogiston”, International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry, 14(1): 27-51.
External links
● Louis Lémery – Wikipedia.