"That a burning body changed the quality of the air around it, whilst itself undergoing a complete change of properties, had not escaped the attention of the phlogistians. Beccher and Stahl, although they made no investigation into the nature of the change which air underwent when it supported combustion, were aware that a limited quantity of air in which a combustible had burned till it was extinguished, could not a second time support combustion, a fact... of universal belief from the earliest times."