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" "[T]wo ingots one... of gold, and the other of iron, which appear by the balance to be equal, are nevertheless not so—for the iron is as much heavier than the gold, according to reason, as the air which it displaces is heavier than that displaced by the gold...
John Rey (1583–1645) (or, in French) Jean Rey, was a physician of , France who in 1630 published a tract on , or of metals, after being notified by Brun, an apothecary of Bergerac, France, of Brun's experiments (as early as 1629) on the calcination of tin. Brun had melted 2 pounds six ounces of tin, and after 6 hours the resulting calx weighed seven ounces more than the original tin. More than one hundred and forty years before Antoine Lavoisier, John Rey recognized that in the calcination of lead or tin, part of the air provided an increase in mass to the calcined metal oxide. His work was eclipsed first by the phlogiston theory and then later, by Lavoisier's discoveries disproving the existence of phlogiston. Lavoisier's oxygen theory confirmed Rey's earlier report, of which Lavoisier claimed he was unaware. After the presentation of Lavoisier's 1775 memoir at the Académie des sciences, (1725-1798) wrote a letter to Abbé , director of the journal Observations sur la Physique, sur l'Histoire naturelle and sur les Arts, to ask him to publish an update notice, recognizing the priority Rey's work.
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God, creating the universe, neither made it perfectly like Himself, nor perfectly unlike, for He, being One, has made the world as not one, from the diverse multiplicity of its innumerable parts, ordaining, nevertheless, that they should collect into a certain unity by their exact contiguity. The upper world has no connexion with this subject; the lower, and elementary world, owes this contiguity to the weight divinely impressed on its parts, aided by the subtle fluidity of some of its simple bodies. It is by this quality, with which the matter of the four elements is more or less invested, that they are separated from one another, and each transported to its proper place, as the generation of compounds, and the beauty of the universe requires.
Moreover, all the world is agreed, that from death to life there is no return. Yet the chemists assure us, if we moisten the calx of lead, and mix it with water in which samphire (salicot) has been dissolved, then, having dried it, put it in a crucible with a small vent, and heat strongly and quickly, that we shall reduce it to its original state.
I answer, and proudly maintain, "That this increase of weight comes from the air, thickened and made heavy, and in some measure rendered adhesive in the vessel by the violent and long—continued heat of the furnace—which air mixes with the calx (its union being assisted by the continual stirring), and attaches itself to its smallest particles—no otherwise than as water, when sand is thrown into it, makes it heavier by moistening it, and adhering to its smallest grains."