Antoine Lavoisier · Science

Respiration as Combustion: The Slow Fire of Life

With Laplace and the ice calorimeter, Lavoisier showed that breathing is a slow burning - a living animal consumes oxygen and gives off heat and carbonic acid, exactly as a candle does. Chemistry entered physiology, and life became a chemical process. A brief, honest coda: his death under the Terror.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that Lavoisier and Laplace, using an ice calorimeter, showed that a guinea pig’s respiration produces heat in the same proportion as the burning of charcoal that yields the same carbonic acid - so respiration is a slow combustion, and life is, in part, a chemical fire. Explain the experiment and what…

Leads to Lucretius.

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