the alkaloids. In 1811 Courtois was manufacturing artificial nitre, and experimenting on the extraction of alkali from seaweed. He had crystallised soda from some of the mother liquor until it would yield no more crystals, and then he warmed the liquor in a vessel to which a little sulphuric acid had been accidentally added. He was surprised to see beautiful violet vapours disengaged, and from these scales of a grayish-black colour and of metallic lustre were deposited.
Courtois was too busy at the time to follow up his discovery, but he brought it to the notice of a chemist friend named Clement. The latter presented a report of his experiments to the Academy of Sciences on November 20th, 1813, two years after Courtois's first observation. No suggestion was made by Courtois or Clement of the new substance being an element.
This deduction became the occasion of an acrimonious dispute between Gay-Lussac and Humphry Davy. The English chemist happened to be in Paris (by special favour of Napoleon) at the time when Clement read his paper. He immediately commenced experimenting, and was apparently the first to suspect the elementary nature of iodine. His claim was confirmed by a communication he made to Cuvier. But Gay-Lussac forestalled his announcement in a paper he read at the Academy on December 6th, 1813. Davy complained of the trick Gay-Lussac played him, and Hofer, who investigated the circumstances, came to the conclusion that Davy was certainly the first to recognise iodine as a simple body, and to give it its name from the Greek, Ion, violet. Ion was originally Fion, but had lost its initial. The Latin viola was derived from the original word.
Jean Francois Coindet, of Geneva (an Edinburgh
