a. and sb. [f. the name of G. E. Stahl, a German chemist 1660–1734 + -IAN.]
A. adj. Pertaining to Stahl or his doctrines.
a. 1790. Cullen, Wks. (1827), I. 405. The Stahlian principle. Ibid., 406. The Stahlian system.
1822–9. Good’s Study Med. (ed. 3), II. 71. Hoffman … omitted the metaphysical part of the Stahlian hypothesis.
1832. J. Thomson, Life, etc. Cullen, I. 179. The Stahlian practice.
B. sb. A follower of Stahl; an animist.
a. 1790. Cullen, Wks. (1827), I. 22. I am equally remote from the materialists on the one hand, and the Stahlians on the other.
1839. Hooper’s Lex. Med. (ed. 7), 1217. The Stahlians are also called Animists, and their school is called the Dynamic school.
1876. F. H. Butler, in Encycl. Brit., V. 461/1. The Stahlians, however, met the difficulty by declaring that substance [phlogiston] to be the principle of levity or negative weight.
