Chemistry, Pharmacy and Revolution in France, 1777-1809 (review)

The Chemical Revolution and the French Revolution have long formed a tantalizing parallel. The coincidence of date (1789) and location (France) seems to demand there be some connection between them. Historians, alas, have generally come up with little to establish the influence of one upon the other. Their only tangible point of contact was an inverse one: the Chemical Revolution's most radical thinker, Lavoisier, was condemned in the French Revolution as a reactionary tax collector and sent to the guillotine.

Jonathan Simon takes a novel approach to the question by focusing on the profession of pharmacy. His conclusion, that the new brand of pharmacy that appeared in the nineteenth century depended crucially on both Revolutions, may not answer the question of influence, but it does show how the two histories can be intertwined. His focus on pharmacy allows him to revisit each of these events, both of them constituting well-trodden historical grounds, from an original perspective.

The Chemical Revolution is traditionally characterized as the transition from Stahl's phlogiston theory to Lavoisier's oxygen theory. Simon ignores that aspect completely, however, and presents it as the process by which chemistry gradually separated itself from pharmacy. Through most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, what chemistry had been practiced had largely been done by pharmacists. Simon discusses the seventeenth century apothecaries, Nicolas Lemery and Christophle Glaser, showing that their discussion of corpuscularian and Paracelsian theories was inseparable from the practical aims of their work as artisans.

The apothecaries' dominance over chemistry reached a peak in 1777, when Louis XVI effectively created the position of pharmacist by splitting what had previously been the guild of apothicaires-épiciers. The old guild buildings were replaced by the Collège de Pharmacie de Paris, the spicers were removed, and the apothicaires were renamed pharmaciens. Spicers could now only provide simple ingredients, while pharmacists had the privilege of mixing them for medicines. The speeches given at the opening of the Collège show a confidence that the mastery of chemistry would allow pharmacy to rise from the ranks of a craft to a science.

But instead, chemistry would effect its own rise only by leaving pharmacy behind. Already in the Encyclopédie, Gabriel-François Venel spoke of making chemistry "worthy of the interest of philosophers" and paid little attention to its practical applications. Lavoisier completed the turn to "philosophical chemistry," severing all ties between the discipline and its associated applications.

To get at the impact of the French Revolution on the disciplines of pharmacy and chemistry, Simon concentrates on the figure of Antoine-François de Fourcroy, using his career "to understand the enabling power of the extraordinary political circumstances that shaped it" (126). Fourcroy had studied with Lavoisier after training as a doctor and finished an utter convert to the power and independence of chemistry. He fared well under the Revolution, holding prominent positions throughout its various stages. In this way, he managed to participate in several major overhauls in the teaching of medicine and chemistry, advocating the role of philosophical chemistry in each instance. Of most interest to Simon is Fourcroy's law of 25 Thermidor year XI (13 August 1803) which reorganized the teaching of pharmacy, as one of chemistry's many dependent arts.

After the Revolution, there was substantial tension between pharmacists who accepted the new chemistry and pharmacists who wanted to maintain the traditional independence of their field. By the next generation, however, Fourcroy's influence prevailed. Simon takes Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin, a pharmacist who followed closely the path of his chemist mentor, Fourcroy, as representative of the "New Pharmacy" that comes to define the nineteenth century. Simon's narrative makes clear that fortunes had changed since 1777: chemistry was now the master discipline and pharmacy the subservient. Less clear, however, is the precise nature of the relationship that emerges between the two fields. Simon may describe them in one sentence as "interconnected", in the next as "divergent" (163).

Simon's emphasis on...