Chapter VIII (3)

Hilaire-Marin Rouelle, who was born at Caen in 1718, was, however, too eminent a chemist to be passed over in silence. His elder brother, William Francis, was a member of the Academy of Sciences, and demonstrator to Macquer, who gave lectures in the Jardin du Roi. At the death of Macquer, in 1770, Hilaire-Marin Rouelle succeeded him. He devoted the whole of his time and money to this situation, and quite altered the nature of the experimental course of chemistry given in the Jardin du Roi. He was in some measure the author of the chemistry of animal bodies, at least in France. When he published his experiments on the salts of urine, and of blood, he had scarcely any model; and though he committed some considerable mistakes, he ascertained several essential and important facts, which have been since fully confirmed by more modern experimenters. He died on the 7th of April, 1779, aged sixty-one years. His temper was peculiar, and he was too honest and too open for the situation in which he was placed, and for a state of society in which every thing was carried by intrigue and finesse. This is the reason why, in France, his reputation was lower than it ought to have been. It accounts, too, for his never becoming a member of the Academy of Sciences, nor of any of the other numerous academies which at that time swarmed in France. Nothing is more common than to find these unjust decisions raise or depress men of science far above or far below their true standard. Romé de Lisle, the first person who commenced the study of crystals, and placed that study in a proper point of view, was a man of the same stamp with the younger Rouelle, and never on that account, became a member of any academy, or acquired that reputation during his lifetime, to which his laborious career justly entitled him. It would be an easy, though an invidious task, to point out various individuals, especially in France, whose reputation, in consequence of accidental and adventitious circumstances, rose just as much above their deserts, as those of Rouelle, and Romé de Lisle were sunk below.