For some pre-PhD review I am reading through Chemical Principles: The Quest for Insight uhh 7th edition? Once again it is so frustrating how much these "history of science" intro sections are so overwhelmingly Eurocentric. Giving the Greeks credit for the four elements in the temporal line between the history of mankind and modern atomic theory is such a bizarre but inescapable convention. Was no population in the wider world for 3000 years making inroads into the discretization of substances before Dalton? I have my humble doubts.
Second frustration: no thorough description of the methodology for Dalton's measurements other than "measurements" has been provided, neither in this text nor many sources online. I am going to have to track down what exact instruments he was using one of these days.
Good things: I have apparently NOT forgotten everything I have ever learned. Breezing through some of these sections. I am going through the intro/review section at all solely to refamiliarize myself with the way in which these topics are typically discussed before diving into the purportedly more mathematically and otherwise challenging main text.
