Supposed fire-like element contained within combustible bodies and released during combustion, according to superseded scientific theories of the 17th and 18th centuries.
By the late eighteenth century the French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier had replaced phlogistontheory with caloric theory.
2
At first the phlogistontheory seemed to explain in an indisputable way all the known chemical phenomena.
3
Joseph Priestley, the courageous Unitarian and skeptic who discovered oxygen, was a believer in the phlogistontheory.
4
His explanations of chemical phenomena were based on the phlogistontheory, in which, like Priestley, he always, believed.
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In 1771 he gave the first blow to the phlogistontheory by his experiments on the calcination of metals.
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The discovery of oxygen was the last but most important blow to the tottering phlogistontheory, though Priestley himself would not admit it.
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This was the final blow to the phlogistontheory, which, although it had been tottering for some time, had not been completely overthrown.
8
He did much to overthrow the phlogistontheory, which was universally accepted in his time; and his researches upon arsenic were of the highest importance.