ORIGINS OF MODERNITY

alchemy & chemistry

Pomet, Pierre (1658-1699)
Lémery, Nicolas (1645-1715)
A compleat history of drugs / written in French by Monsieur Pomet ... : to which is added what is observable on the same subject, from Messrs. Lemery, and Tournefort, divided into three classes, vegetable, animal and mineral.
London : Printed for R. Bonwicke, William Freeman, Timothy Goodwin, John Walthoe, Matthew Wotton, S. Manship, John Nicholson, Benjamin Tooke, Rich. Parker, and Ralph Smith, 1712.

This practical handbook of drugs was first published in 1694 and given an extensive review in the French Journal des Scavans. The additions to the English edition of 1712 are by the French chemist Nicholas Lemery who was a corpuscularian, though not of the same strain as Boyle. Like Lèvre he favoured the five element theory and the acid/alkali theory popular amongst the French but opposed by Boyle and Locke.