“From all the facts that have been stated, there is every reason to consider this new substance as _an undecompounded body_. In its specific gravity, lustre, colour, and the high number in which it enters into combination, it resembles the metals; but in all its chemical agencies it is more analogous to oxygen and chlorine; it is a non-conductor of electricity, and possesses, like these bodies, the negative electrical energy with respect to metals, inflammable and alkaline substances, and hence when combined with these substances in aqueous solution and electrized in the voltaic circuit, it separates at the positive surface; but it has a positive energy with respect to chlorine.... It agrees with chlorine and fluorine in forming acids with hydrogen. “The name _ione_ has been proposed in France for this new substance from its colour in the gaseous state, from ῐον, viola; and its combination with hydrogen has been named _hydroionic acid_. The name _ione_, in English, would lead to confusion, for its compounds would be called _ionic_ and _ionian_. By terming it _iodine_, from ἱώδης violaceous, this confusion will be avoided, and the name will be more analogous to chlorine and fluorine.” The rapidity with which Davy ascertained the properties and relations of the new substance was characteristic of him. A fortnight’s work--done partly at his hotel and partly in the laboratory of the young Chevreul, amidst a succession of interruptions caused by fêtes, levées, and visits of ceremony--sufficed to accumulate the material for his Royal Society paper, in which he gives with unerring precision, in spite of the small quantity of the matter at his disposal, the broad outlines of the chemistry of iodine. The paper shows him at his best: he seems to have seized, as if by instinct, upon the central fact of the analogy of iodine to chlorine, and he worked out the clue with a perspicacity and insight worthy of his genius. As may be surmised, Davy’s action hardly contributed to his popularity with a certain section of the _savants_ of Paris. Gay Lussac and Thenard were extremely angry with Ampère and Clement for having given him the material for his investigation, and the feeling broke out after the publication of Gay Lussac’s memoir in the Annales de Chimie in 1814. Davy in a note published in the Journal of the Royal Institution says:--