PBA Galleries

[16], 491, [1] pp. With 4 copper-engraved plates, 1 of them folding. (8vo) 22.5x14 cm (8¾x5½"), original boards, rebacked with modern cloth. Second Edition.

Adair Crawford (1748-1795), a chemist and physician, was a pioneer in the development of calorimetric methods for measuring the specific heat capacity of substances and the heat of chemical reactions. In his influential 1779 book "Experiments and Observations on Animal Heat", of which this is the greatly enlarged second edition, Crawford presented new experiments proving that respiratory gas exchange in animals is a combustion (two years after Antoine Lavoisier's influential "On combustion in general"). Old and small rubberstamp of Societe Medicale a Geneve to title-page.