My immediate response to the quoted texts, without having read the originals or the history of phlogiston, is that they are anachronistic. Identifying phlogiston with electrons is little better than identifying it with “negative oxygen”. At least there is such a thing as electrons. But when e.g. carbon burns in oxygen, there is not a flow of electrons from carbon to oxygen. Instead the carbon and oxygen both complete their electron shells by sharing electrons. None of this was known in 1876 or even 1926, but that just means that both Odling and Lewis were themselves wrong about combustion. There is nothing about electrons that can be matched to phlogiston, and even if carbon dioxide were correctly described as C++++ 2O--, well, since it isn’t, it might equally well be speculated to be C---- 2O++ with the electrons going the other way. “Dephlogisticated air” is just oxygen, nothing to do with removing electrons from the air.
My immediate response to the quoted texts, without having read the originals or the history of phlogiston, is that they are anachronistic. Identifying phlogiston with electrons is little better than identifying it with “negative oxygen”. At least there is such a thing as electrons. But when e.g. carbon burns in oxygen, there is not a flow of electrons from carbon to oxygen. Instead the carbon and oxygen both complete their electron shells by sharing electrons. None of this was known in 1876 or even 1926, but that just means that both Odling and Lewis were themselves wrong about combustion. There is nothing about electrons that can be matched to phlogiston, and even if carbon dioxide were correctly described as C++++ 2O--, well, since it isn’t, it might equally well be speculated to be C---- 2O++ with the electrons going the other way. “Dephlogisticated air” is just oxygen, nothing to do with removing electrons from the air.