ABSTRACT
The first edition of the Enclopaedia Brittanica (published between 1768 and 1771 by the Society of Gentlemen in Scotland) devoted 113 pages to 'all the principles of chemistry'. Chemistry was defined as follows:
The object and chief end of chemistry is to separate the different substances that enter into the composition of bodies; to examine each of them apart; to discover their properties and relations; to decompose those very substances, if possible; to compare them together, and combine them with others; to reunite them again into one body, so as to reproduce the original compound with all its properties; or even to produce new compounds that never existed among the works of nature, from mixtures of other substances differently combined.
