phlogistic

For in phlogistic, as in other things, we cauterize our neighbour's digits, but burn our own fingers.

A self-consecrated party, with their phlogistic system, would deal with the whole South, which, on this topic, is a perfect hornet’s nest already, precisely as an intelligent farmer, in Vermont, dealt with a hornet’s nest, under the eaves of his dwelling—he applied the actual cautery; his practice was successful—he destroyed the nest, and with it his entire mansion.

Lavoisier found great difficulty in making his opinions clear because he was obliged to use a language which had been introduced by the phlogistic chemists, and which bore the impress of that theory on most of its terms.

The phlogistic theory, which had tyrannized over chemistry, had been succeeded by the Lavoisierian chemistry, which recognized one acidifier, and this also the one supporter of combustion.

But towards the end of the seventeenth century, at the time that is when the phlogistic theory began to gain pre-eminence, we find gradually springing up a division of chemical substances into mineral, animal and vegetable substances—a division which was based rather on a consideration of the sources whence the substances were derived than on the properties of the substances themselves, and therefore a division which was essentially a non-chemical one.