[Nicolas Lémery and acidity]. / Nicolas Lémery et l'acidité.

After a recalling of Lémery's biography, the history of acidity before Lémery is evoked. The opinions of Theophrastus, Libavius, Otto Techenius, Robert Boyle and François André are compared. According to Lémery's theory points of acids enter the pores of alkalis, giving salts which are different from a simple mixture. This theory was approved by the scientific community. The examples of J. Morin and Baron are given. A short description of the evolution of the concept of acidity after Lémery's period is also given.

[Clarification on publications concerning the synthesis of acetylsalicylic acid]. / Mise au point sur les publications relatives à la synthèse de l'acide acétylsalicylique.

Charles Frédéric Gerhardt (1816-1856) mentioned in his Traité de chimie Organique (1854) a publication, in French (realized in 1852 but published in 1853) entitled "Researches on anhydrous organic acids" in which, was reported the reaction of sodium salicylate with acetyl chloride. He thought that the reaction product was an acid anhydride, but obtained really crude acetylsalicylic acid. Later on, but also in 1853, a publication in german, by the same author related the same experiments. Surprisingly only the second publication has been mentioned in most of the historical studies on the subject. Acetyl salicylic acid was identified and synthesised in 1859 by von Gilm by another method and the product obtained by Gerhardt was identified to it in 1869.

[Do objects have history? A meeting between Pasteur and Whitehead in a lactic-acid bath]. / Os objetos têm história? Encontro de Pasteur com Whitehead num banho de ácido láctico.

Did Pasteur discover, construct, invent lactic acid? This Gordian knot in social studies of the sciences is happily cut when the scene played out at Lille in 1857 is peopled with Whiteheadean conceptual characters. The Nature addressed by Pasteur does not speak the language of scientific utterances but neither is it mute; it is imbued with propositions. Insofar as Pasteur plays the character of a scientist, he is 'acted on' by a singular proposition -- "a tale that perhaps might be told," as Whitehead would say, but that will only be true or false if Pasteur manages to make a real world correspond to this proposition, a world capable of providing logical subjects, and thus offering proof to "whomever judges with impartiality." A hybrid-mediator-translator of Pasteurian and microorganismic propositions, the experimental environment "makes the event," in an encounter from which a new Pasteur and a new yeast emerge, partners of a new history.

[News of the discovery of acids in organic material by C.W. Scheele (author's transl)]. / Neues über die Entdeckung von Säuren in organischem Material durch C.W. Scheele.

With reference to a critical publication by F. Ehrhardt (1780), the author presents and analyses all documents concerning the discovery of tartaric, oxalic and phosphoric acids in animal earth (from bones or hartshorn, Cornu cervi). Furthermore, he dates Scheele's manuscripts Nos 22 to 41 from Oseen's collection, and draws conclusions as to Scheele's studies on fluorspar and to Scheele's acquaintance (1770) with J.G. Gahn and T. Bergman.