Groundbreaking scientific experiments, inventions, and by Jonathan Shectman

By Jonathan Shectman

The 18th century observed the emergence of the economic and chemical revolutions and witnessed the near-universal attractiveness of utilized technology. It was once a time of progressive, lasting transformation for the perform of technological know-how and arithmetic. such a lot tactics and precepts of recent technological know-how took carry through the 18th century, whilst scientists first paired clinical learn with functional software to astounding effects. In over 60 alphabetical entries, Shectman examines on the super medical discoveries, innovations, and inquiries of the interval. commonly used themes reminiscent of the steam engine and scorching air balloon are lined, besides lesser-known themes comparable to the Watt reproduction press and Newton's experimentum crucis.
A thorough dialogue of every entry's medical impression offers readers with an figuring out of the lasting social and political significance of those developments. Narratives improve the entries via including context and viewpoint to the century's attention-grabbing medical historical past. scholars and researchers will locate this reference e-book effortless to take advantage of. incorporated are an appendix of entries indexed by means of clinical box, a thesaurus of phrases, indexes via identify and topic.

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Single-handedly and almost immediately, this book disproves the ancient four-element idea and the pesky Timeline of Important Events xli notion of transmutation; obliterates the notion that air and water are elements by demonstrating their compound nature; shatters the phlogiston theory of substances; and provides modern chemical names to elements and compounds (including the most important element during this time—oxygen). The fundamental transformation of chemistry may be said to be completed with this publication.

Galen recognized the general idea of the nervous system when he dissected an ox's brain. He also dissected the internal organs of the Barbary ape, though he drew errant anatomical comparisons between the brain of this species and that of h u m a n beings. Galen became the leading anatomist of his day and beyond, as his authority lasted virtually unchallenged until the Italian Renaissance. T h e next anatomist on anything close to Galen's level was Leonardo D a Vinci (1452 1519). who lived a millennium and a half later.

He thereby concludes that cross-pollination between individual flowers is much more crucial than scientists have previously thought. 1793 Eli Whitney (1765 1825) invents the cotton gin, a machine capable of cleaning short-grain cotton, the variety most widely grown in the southern United States. S. economy is catastrophic, as the South proclaims its "king" crop, cotton. On the other hand, exploding cotton profits immediately revive the ailing plantation system and expand the Atlantic trade in slaves.

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