---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Hodapp, Minnie Iverson
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 21
number: 9
published: 1918-07
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Hodapp, Minnie Iverson, "Lucy Mack Smith," *Improvement Era* 21, no. 9 (July 1918): 779.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2109unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera2109unse
start_page: 779
end_page: 779
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1918-07)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2109unse
  publication_year: 1918
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1918, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Lucy Mack Smith

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THE MAKERS OF SCIENCE                        781

and contact with many great men, though he         still   made his
living in the ministry.
     It was believed in those days that air was an elementary
     —
thing in fact it had so been classed from the days of the Greek
philosophers. In the course of his researches, however, Priestley came to the conclusion that air is not elementary, but a mixture of substances. This thought led him to the discovery by
which he will always be remembered.
     On the first of August, 1774, he obtained in his studies a
gas that he had not before encountered and with very surprising properties. A lighted candle placed in this gas burned
with a remarkably vigorous flame, and a piece of red-hot wood
sparkled in it and was consumed very fast. Finally he found
that mice and insects lived nearly five times as long in this gas
as in an equal volume of air.      To complete the test, Priestly
breathed some of the gas and he relates that he fancied his
breathing peculiarly light and easy for some time afterwards.
     He soon came to the conclusion that this gas is found in
the atmosphere, and is the ingredient which enables air to support combustion and animal life.
     The gas thus discovered by Priestley was, of course, oxygen,
which forms about one-fifth of the atmosphere. It is now the
knowledge of everyone that when anything burns it unites with
the oxygen in the air. In breathing, the oxygen is taken up by
the blood and the impurities burned and the carbonic acid gas
which is formed is breathed out. It is the oxygen mixed with
the water that enables fish to live in water. Frequently, in serious cases of sickness, pure oxygen is given the patient to stimulate the bodily activities.
     The discovery of the element oxygen by Priestley and of
the nature of combustion by Lavoisier, made possible a new
understanding of chemistry and physiology. Though these two
men discovered what seems to us most elementary truths, it is
by the possession of these truths that much scientific progress
has been made possible.
     Priestley made many other scientific discoveries of note;
in fact, to the day of his death he gave some time to the study
of science.
      Priestley was of a democratic turn of mind.  The republican form of government appealed to him. This was not wholly
pleasing to the English people. When the Bastile in Paris fell,
in 1791, a fanatical mob, knowing Priestley's sympathy for the
J«Vr.Tnch revolutionists, attacked and burned  his house and
church, and destroyed his papers and scientific instruments.
Priestley escaped, but three years later removed to the United
States, where he settled at Northumberland, Pennsylvania.