Revista CENIC Ciencias Químicas (May 2018)
Pierre Bayen
Abstract
Pierre Bayen (1725-1798), a French pharmacist, made significant contributions to chemistry, metallurgy, and geology. Among the many position he occupied, the most important was being head of the pharmaceutical services of the army, His work about mineral waters, led him to discover the fulminant effect of mixtures of sulfur with mercury oxides, that the red oxide of mercury was self-reducing, that during its reduction an elastic fluid separate (oxygen, which he did not identify), and that during the oxidation of metals, they absorbed an elastic fluid from the atmosphere. These results led him to be the first European scientist to openly reject the phlogiston theory (all this, years before Lavoisier). Together with Venel they disproved the claim that tin contained poisonous amounts of arsenic.
