Dissertatio medica inauguralis, de humore acido a cibis orto, et magnesia alba. IN: Thesaurus medicus; sive, Disputationum, in Academia Edinensei pp 271-304
Edinburgh: Typis Academicis, 1779. 1st Edition. Hardcover. THE DISCOVERY OF CARBON DIOXIDE. 8vo cont. calf, spine ends chipped front end cracked, front cover detached. There is perhaps no other instance of a graduation thesis so weighted with significant novelty as Black's De humore acido a cibis orto, et magnesia alba presented to the Faculty, 11 June, 1754" (William Osler in DNB). It "was soon recognised for what it is: a brilliant model, perhaps the first successful model, of quantitative chemical investigation, as well as a classic exemplar of experimental science worthy of comparison with Newton's Opticks The original dissertation is extremely rare. This title (published 25 years later by William Smellie) is also quite rare. The 1779 copy has sold twice on RBH in the last century (in both cases it was this offered copy that sold). OCLC lists one copy of the 1779 version in any library. Black's biographer Sir William Ramsay, who was awarded the 1904 Nobel Prize in chemistry "in recognition of his services in the discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air," wrote of "Black's celebrated thesis, which gained for him not merely the degree of Doctor of Medicine, but also brought his name before every philosopher in Europe and America as that of a man who had made a discovery of more fundamental influence on the progress of Chemistry than any which had previously been described" (Ramsay, p. 20). "In the late spring of 1754, the famous Scottish chemist and physician Joseph Black (1728-99) put the finishing touches on his thesis for the doctorate of medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Entitled Dissertatio medica inauguralis, de humore acido a cibis orto, et magnesia alba, it has received unstinted praise as one of the great classics in the history of science [Black] studied and carefully distinguished the chemical behaviour of the common alkalis (carbonates) and of the two alkaline earths, lime and magnesia. He showed that the changes produced in these substances by roasting and calcining the mother substances (limestone, chalk and magnesia alba) were associated with the loss of an elastic, aeriform constituent, a fixed air [carbon dioxide], and need not be explained by assuming that some hypothetical principle was added during intense heating. Most important of all, Black proved by careful gravimetrical experiments that this elastic fluid was a precise quantitative constituent of these chemical compounds. As is well known, Black's results led directly to the classic studies on gases carried out by Henry Cavendish, Joseph Priestley, and Black's own pupil, Daniel Rutherford" (Guerlac, p. 125). An expanded English translation was published by the Edinburgh Philosophical Society in 1756, and the original thesis was reprinted in 1779 in William Smellie's Thesaurus medicus (this title). The 1779 edition was reprinted in 1785 (which is somewhat more available). Joseph Black was born in Bordeaux where his father, who was born in Belfast but was ultimately of Scottish descent, had a wine business. Joseph was sent to school in Belfast in 1740, and around 1745 entered Glasgow University, where he studied languages and natural philosophy, and later, about 1748, anatomy and medicine under William Cullen. After working for three years in Cullen s laboratory, in 1752 Black left Glasgow for the more prestigious University of Edinburgh, where he attended the lectures of the physiologist Robert Whytt, and of Charles Alston, a botanist and chemist who lectured on materia medica. Good / No Jacket. Item #EBS100206
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