Developing from the errors of alchemy and phlogiston theory, chemistry had been ‘placed in the ranks of the exact sciences — a science of number, weight and measure’. It had produced practical applications in every sphere: medicine, agriculture, manufacturing, aerostation and meteorology, for example. But it had also advanced pure science: the doctrines of oxygen, latent heat, atomic weight, polar electricity and the prime elements (of which more than fifty were now known).
