Alpha Book

In this same period, the first
important advances were made in the construction of balloons, and the
conquest of the air was begun. In the eighteenth century, moreover, the
foundations of modern chemistry were laid by Joseph Priestley (1733-
1804), Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794), and Henry Cavendish
(1731-1810); oxygen was discovered, water was decomposed into its
elements, and the nomenclature of modern chemistry had its inception.
In medicine and surgery, too, pioneer work was done by John Hunter
(1728-1793), a noted Scotch surgeon and anatomist, and by the Swiss
professor Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777), the "father of modern
physiology"; the facts which eighteenth-century physicians discovered
regarding the circulation of the blood made possible more intelligent
and more effective methods of treating disease; and just at the close
of the eighteenth century, Edward Jenner (1749-1823), an English
physician, demonstrated that the dread disease of smallpox could be
prevented by vaccination.


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