Chemistry and Industry, November 20th, 1995
How was it that the word `oxygen' became respectable in England in the early 1790s, despite the implacable opposition of nearly all the leading English chemists of the day? Unusually, the catalyst of this change was not a scientific paper, but a poem. The Botanic Garden, written by Dr Erasmus Darwin and backed by extensive scientific notes, was published in two parts in 1789 and 1792. It was so successful that Darwin was generally acclaimed as the leading English poet of the day. So, the many readers of poem imbibed his belief in `French chemistry' without realising how controversial it was a...
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