GUY TON DE MORVEAU, LOUIS BERNARD, a chemist of very considerable reputation, was born on the 4th of January 1737, at Dijon, in the university of which his father was professor of civil law. In very early life he showed a turn for mechanics, and after studying at home he went to college, which he quitted at sixteen years of age; he then became a law student for three years in the university of Dijon, and afterwards repaired to Paris to acquire a knowledge of the practice of the law. At the age of twenty-four be had pleaded several important causes, and his father purchased for him the office of advocate-general in the parliament of Dijon; he soon afterwards was admitted an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of Dijon. His taste for chemistry seems to have arisen from his attendance upon the lectures of Dr. Cbardenon, who was in the habit of reading memoirs on chemical subjects ; and, without neglecting the cultivation of literature, he applied himself with groat diligence to the study of chemistry.
In 1772, having previously published some leas important papers, be gave to the world a collection of scientific essays, entitled ' Digres sion+, Academiques t' the memoirs contained in this work on phlogiston, solution, and crystallisation merit particular notice, and evince the superior knowledge which he had acquired on the subjects that he bad undertaken to illustrate.
In the following year he achieved the important discovery of the means of destroying infection by acid vapours, and of all his labours it is this for which his name will be transmitted to posterity with those of tho benefactors of mankind. In one of the churches of Dijon a practice had prevailed of burying the dead in considerable numbers within its walls ; this proceeding occasioned an infectious exhalation, which brought on a malignant disorder, to the groat alarm of the inhabitants of the city. When other attempts to remedy this evil had failed, it occurred to Morveau that the vapours of acid might be successfully employed to remove it. With this view be made a mixture of sulphuric acid and common salt, in wide-mouthed vessels, which were placed upon chafing-dishes, and in different parts of the edifice ; after closing the windows and doors for twenty-four hours, and then suffering the air freely to pervade the building, no remains of the fetid smell were perceptible, and the church was cleared from infection. The same process was tried on other occasions, and the practice is still continued, with the improvement of substituting chlorine gas for muriatic or hydrochloric, acid gas.
Although this was probably the first employment of muriatio acid gas as a disinfectant on a large scale, and with results so striking as those detailed, it appears nevertheless, that Dr. Johnstone of Worcester had recommended the use of the same gas for this purpose in the year 1756 ; it is even stated that he employed it in the prison of Worcester, but he does not seem to have published his process before the appearance of Morveau's tract on the subject.
In 1766 Morveau commeuced a course of lectures on chemistry in Dijon, which met with great success, being delivered with clearness and illustrated by numerous and striking experiments. In tho year following be published the first volume of a course of chemistry, entitled Elemens do Cbimio de l'Aeaddmie de Dijon :' the work was completed in four volumes. Ho afterwards undertook to supply the chemical articles for the • Encyclopedie atetbodique ; the articles acide," adhesion,' and affinit6' contain a vast body of information clearly drawn up : for reasons which are not known, be discontinued his connection with this work. A paper which ho published in the 'Journal do Physique' for 1782, on the necessity of establishing a new and scientific nomenclature, had a great share in producing the reformation in chemical nomenclature rendered necessary by the establishment of tho antiphlogistie theory, and by the numerous new facts which had been discovered.
On the breaking out of the French Revolution Guyton do Morveau was made a member of the Constitutional Assembly and of the Council of Five Hundred. In 1799 Bonaparte appointed him one of the administrators-general of the mint, and in the year following director of the Polytechnic School; and after being an officer of the Legion of Honour ho was created a baron of the French empire in 1613. At an advanced period of life ho married Madame Picardet, the widow of a Dijon academician : be left no children. After teaching about sixteen years in the Polytechnic School he gave up the appointment; and after about three years' retirement he died on the 3rd of January, 1816.
The publication of Onyton de Morveau on chemical subjects are very numerous, acrd few of his contemporaries contributed more to tho advancement of the science ; he was however not the author of any striking or fundamental chemical discoveries. His papers may be found in the ' Memoirs of the Dijon Academy,' the Anuales de Chimie,' and the 'Journal de Physique'