Note 3 — VOLUME VI slice I Châtelet to Chicago (continued 4)

The theory of Berthollet was essentially mechanical, and he attempted to prove that the course of a reaction depended not on affinities alone but also on the masses of the reacting components. In this respect his hypothesis has much in common with the “law of mass-action” developed at a much later date by the Swedish chemists Guldberg and Waage, and the American, Willard Gibbs (see Chemical Action). In his classical thesis Berthollet vigorously attacked the results deduced by Bergman, who had followed in his table of elective attractions the path traversed by Stahl and S. F. Geoffroy.