Sir Chrales BLAGDEN Experiments [2 papers, 1775?]

November 23, 2021

Rare Books, Documents, Photos, and Artwork

Lot 22

Sir Chrales BLAGDEN Experiments [2 papers, 1775?]

Estimate: $500 - $800

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About this Lot

Description

Charles Brian BLAGDEN [The importance of sweating] Experiments... [with: Further Experiments]

Offered for sale by Adam Langlands of 'Shadowrock Rare Books' - for more information please contact him via email at adamlanglands@gmail.com

Sir Charles Brian BLAGDEN FRS (1748-1820).

[Drop-head titles:] Experiments and Observations in an heated room … Paper I. Read at the Royal Society, February 16, 1774. [Further Experiments and Observations in an heated room … Paper II. Read at the Royal Society, July 6, 1775]. [London: undated but ?1775]. 2 parts in one volume, quarto (9 ¼ x 7in; 235 x 178mm). Pp. [1-]2-24. Collation: A-C4. Original blue/grey sugar-paper wrappers (splitting to backstrip).

Very rare – I have checked and the copy in the National Library of Scotland is a match for the present work and thus dates to 1775 or later. No other copies sold, none for sale. Blagden is the first western scientist to realise that sweating is our body’s method of regulating our internal temperature.

Sir Joseph Banks features as one of those taking part in the experiments, and he went on to be an important patron of Blagden’s. E.g. in 1783, Banks entrusted Blagden with the task of re-establishing contact with Benjamin Franklin (in Paris) after the Revolutionary War.

“Sir Charles Brian Blagden FRS (17 April 1748 – 26 March 1820) was a British physician and scientist. He served as a medical officer in the Army (1776–1780) and later held the position of Secretary of the Royal Society (1784–1797). Blagden won the Copley Medal in 1788 and was knighted in 1792.

He died in Arcueil, France in 1820, and was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

In June 1783, Blagden, then assistant to Henry Cavendish, visited Antoine Lavoisier in Paris and described how Cavendish had created water by burning "inflammable air". Lavoisier's dissatisfaction with the Cavendish's "dephlogistinization" theory led him to the concept of a chemical reaction, which he reported to the Royal Academy of Sciences on 24 June 1783, effectively founding modern chemistry. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1789. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1789.

Blagden experimented on human ability to withstand high temperatures. In his report to the Royal Society in 1775, he was first Western scientist to officially recognise the role of perspiration in thermoregulation.

Blagden's experiments on how dissolved substances like salt affected the freezing point of water led to the discovery that the freezing point of a solution decreases in direct proportion to the concentration of the solution, now called Blagden's Law “ (wikipedia)

ESTC T184547 (but date given incorrectly as 1774. 3 copies – one in Scotland; two in the US).

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