Traité élémentaire de chimie

Publication of Lavoisier's Traité élémentaire de chimie

Lavoisier's pioneering table of elements ran to 33 entries — and opened with light and caloric, the supposed fluid of heat.

Paris, 1789: two volumes from Cuchet

Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier's two-volume Traité élémentaire de chimie was published in Paris by Cuchet in 1789. On 4 February the Académie Royale des Sciences had heard a favourable report from its commissioners, Jean d'Arcet and Claude-Louis Berthollet, who judged the manuscript worthy of printing under the Academy's privilege.

Two thousand first-edition copies came off the press soon afterwards. The title page carries only the year; scholarly sources place the appearance in February or March, and no exact day is established.

Thirty-three simple substances

The book defined elements operationally — the last substances then reachable by chemical analysis — and presented a table of 33 of them. Lavoisier admitted explicitly that further analysis might break some of his simple substances into simpler ones.

The table was not a modern one. It kept entries such as caloric, the supposed matter of heat. Twenty-three of the 33 are still classed as elements today.

The plates were engraved by Marie-Anne Lavoisier

The edition contained 13 folding copperplate illustrations of chemical apparatus, engraved by Lavoisier's wife and collaborator, Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze Lavoisier.

The project had begun as an expansion of Lavoisier's 1787 paper on reforming chemical nomenclature and grew into a full exposition built around measurement, mass balance and oxygen-based chemistry. Robert Kerr's English translation followed in 1790 as Elements of Chemistry, in a New Systematic Order.

Sources

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What the sources leave uncertain

The publication year and Paris publisher are secure. Secondary scholarly sources variously place the book’s appearance in February or March 1789; the title page itself gives only the year, so no exact publication day should be invented.
Calling it the “first modern chemistry textbook” is a widely used retrospective judgment, not an uncontested bibliographic first.