Editing Antoine Lavoisier (section)

===''Elementary Treatise of Chemistry''===
[[File:Liebig Company Trading Card Ad 01.12.004 front.tif|thumb|Lavoisier and Berthollet, Chimistes Celebres, [[Liebig's Extract of Meat Company]] Trading Card, 1929]]

Lavoisier employed the new nomenclature in his ''[[Traité élémentaire de chimie]]'' (''Elementary Treatise on Chemistry''), published in 1789. This work represents the synthesis of Lavoisier's contribution to chemistry and can be considered the first modern [[textbook]] on the subject. The core of the work was the oxygen theory, and the work became a most effective vehicle for the transmission of the new doctrines. It presented a unified view of new theories of chemistry, contained a clear statement of the law of conservation of mass, and denied the existence of phlogiston. This text clarified the concept of an element as a substance that could not be broken down by any known method of chemical analysis and presented Lavoisier's theory of the formation of chemical compounds from elements. It remains a classic in the history of science. While many leading chemists of the time refused to accept Lavoisier's new ideas, demand for ''Traité élémentaire'' as a textbook in Edinburgh was sufficient to merit translation into English within about a year of its French publication.<ref>See the "Advertisement," p. vi of Kerr's translation, and pp. xxvi–xxvii, xxviii of Douglas McKie's introduction to the Dover edition.</ref> In any event, the ''Traité élémentaire'' was sufficiently sound to convince the next generation.