BAUME (ANTHONY), a druggist in Paris, distinguished by his knowledge of chemistry, and by his practical application of that knowledge, was born at Senlis in 1728. He was the son of an innkeeper, and was put apprentice to the eminent chemist Geoffroy. He had not received a regular school education, a defect which occasioned him many difficulties in prosecuting his scientific researches, which he nevertheless did with much ardour. In 1752, he was admitted a member of the College of Pharmacy. Soon after he was appointed professor of chemistry at that establishment, and in his lectures he displayed the excellent arrangement which is seen in his published works. He carried to a great extent his commercial establishment in Paris for the preparation of drugs for medicine and the arts, such as the acetate of lead, the muriate of tin, mercurial salts, and antimonial mixtures. At the same time, he published papers on the crystallization of salts, on the phenomena of congelation, on those of fermentation, on the combinations and preparations of sulphur, opium, mercury, boracic acid, platina, and Peruvian bark, on the metallic oxides, the acetates of the alkalis, on emetic tartar, on vegetable fecula, and on vegetable extracts. In consequence of these scientific works, Baume was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences. He wrote a great many articles in the Dictionnaire des Arts et Métiers, and had previously published several technological papers, namely on dyeing, on the gilding of clock-work, on a method for extinguishing fires, on the mode of keeping corn, on buildings of plaster, on soap-making, on clay, and on the nature of soils fitted for agriculture. He made numerous experiments along with Macquer, for the purpose of fabricating in France a porcelain equal to the Japanese. He established the first manufactory of sal-ammoniac in France, a substance which before that was obtained from Egypt. He was the first who devised and set on foot a process for bleaching raw silk. Having acquired a competency by the success of these different undertakings, he retired from trade, and devoted his
time to the application of chemistry to the arts. He improved the process for dyeing scarlet at the manufactory of the Gobelins, and he published a cheap process for purifying saltpetre. He bestowed much time in forming an areometer intended for general use; and published a process for obtaining a mild fecula from the horse-chestnut. By the revolution he lost his fortune, but was not thereby disheartened: this calamity led him to resume his trade. He was chosen a correspondent of the Institute in 1796. He died in 1804, at the age of 76. He was temperate, regular in his habits, and active. Many of his papers are published in the Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences. Of his separate publications, the following may be mentioned here: Dissertation sur l'Ether, in 12mo. Plan d'un cours de Chimie Experimentale, 1757, in 12mo. Opuscules de Chimie, 1798, in 8vo. Éléments de Pharmacie Théorique et Pratique, 2 vols. 8vo. Chimie Experimentale et Raisonnée, 3 vols. in 8vo, 1773. This last is antiquated, on account of the many improvements which have been made in the science of chemistry since its publication; but his Elements of Pharmacy are still useful, as a good dispensary, written with method and clearness: the processes are well described, and the formulæ properly discussed. He did not adopt the Lavoisierian Nomenclature. (y.)