Experimental teaching and the classification of elements in French and German textbooks of the first half of XIX Century

Abstract

The present view of textbooks is that they are repetitive and without inspiration literature. The discovery of periodicity by Mendeleiev is an exception that confirms the rule, as he arrived to the periodic table while writing a General Chemistry book for his St. Petersburg University’ students. In this work I am going to derive the same kind of contribution from what some French and German professors did, through the classifications of elements published in their books in the first half of XIX Century.