ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the discovery of the compound nature of water during the period when the controversy proper was quiet. The attributional approach to discovery involves the idea that cumulative usage is just as important, if not more important, than explicit argument in establishing discovery claims. The chapter examines encyclopaedia articles as well as scientific texts, especially, chemical ones, and analyses histories and popular representations of the main protagonists. Systematic treatises and texts of chemistry began to proliferate in the late eighteenth century, variously reporting and summarizing research in the field and increasingly offering systematic surveys of it for students at all levels. In studying processes of attribution the people rely necessarily upon the examination of relevant texts, in the case treatises on chemistry, dictionaries of arts and sciences and, importantly, encyclopaedias. After the passage of the Apothecaries Act in 1815, chemistry lecture courses proliferated to cater to those seeking to qualify for the medical profession.
