FIFTH: PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE

THE

(Continued)

CHAPTER X

STATE OF MEDICINE IN A.D. 1800

HE century to the end of which we have come was crowned with a galaxy of great men in every department of science and philosophy. The classical period of English Literature had come and gone. France and Germany were just entering upon theirs. Benjamin Franklin was popular at the French Capital among a brilliant coterie of men and women of genius in Literature, Science, and Art. Germany was hardly second to France in the number of her great poets and philosophers. Goethe was her rising star. For great philosophers and writers England outranked them both. Neither of them had produced a Hume or a Gibbon, a Newton or a Herschel. America had achieved her independence and was coming into notice with the high and distinguished character of her public men. Napoleon had entered upon his career; Frederick the Great had closed his. The influence of the Encyclopedists in France was on the wane; so, also, was statecraft. Statesmanship was, however, in the

ascendancy. From the French Capital were being echoed all over the world sentiments of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. The great Lavoisier, the chemist, had been slain by the Tribune; but Davy, a greater than a Lavoisier, arose in England to carry forward a work so auspiciously begun by him. Priestley, the illustrious chemist and joint discoverer with Lavoisier of oxygen, had taken himself off to the wilds of America, there to enjoy without persecution or molestation the freedom of opinion and conviction denied him in England. The priests of the parent church still discoursed on Christianity in a dead vernacular, of which their auditors were wholly ignorant; but to read the Holy Bible in one's native tongue had ceased to be a crime. Nor was it any longer a crime in Western Europe to teach children to read, or to send them to school, could their parents afford it, or if the workshop and factories had not a more pressing claim upon their services, or their parents for their wages. Men and women, innocent of every sin but delusions, were no longer hung for sorcery or witchcraft; but the insane were kept in chains and dungeons as madfolks, or guilty of obsession. Buffon had written his great work on Natural History; Cuvier had written his; the great Huber had finished his; Dujardin likewise his. The period of the great historians had passed; but the firmament was ablaze with great thinkers and men of science and discovery. The new century

which lies before us will inherit an imperishable love of science and philosophy, and receive from its predecessor a multitude of great men who had barely passed their maturity. The whole West was illuminated by them; their influence was being felt across the sea. If, therefore, the nineteenth century shall have reaped a greater harvest of science and discovery, and made a greater stride in civilization than the eighteenth, it will be because of the seed sown by, and the great impetus for knowledge that the nineteenth received from, its great predecessor.

Chemistry had made great advancement by the discoveries of the immortal Dalton, Cavendish, Lavoisier, Davy, and Priestley. The true nature of air, water, combustion, respiration, etc., had been revealed by them, as well as the constitution

of certain gases. The illustrious Sir Humphry

Davy came upon the stage at this juncture, with a genius for chemical research which had not been surpassed in all history. His way had been made straight for him by Lavoisier and Cavendish, having been born about the time that the discoveries of these celebrities were being made. We should not fulfil the expectation of the reader were we to pass with a mere mention the name of this great scientist.

Humphry Davy was born in Penzance, Cornwall, in 1778. His father was a wood-carver. Neither father nor mother was conspicuous for mental traits and acquirements. Davy's edu

cation was meagre, and not such as to fit him for a scientific career. He had at an early day manifested a taste for fiction, and in poetry found a congenial field in which to exercise his bent. At the age of eleven, Davy began an epic poem, making the Greek Diomede the hero. It was never finished. When he was sixteen years old he had the good fortune to meet the son of the celebrated James Watt, the inventor of the steamengine. This acquaintance brought him into fellowship with other men with a taste for science; among others, Dr. Beddoes. In the year 1800 he published his first work on "Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide and its Respiration." The discovery of this gas, nitrous oxide, or "laughing gas, we may fairly attribute to him. In the following year, at the age of twenty-three, he lectured on chemical subjects before the Royal Institution, London. Dr. Paris praises him as a lecturer. He was eminently successful at the outset. "His youth, his simplicity, his natural eloquence," says Dr. Paris, "his chemical knowledge, his happy illustrations, and well-conducted experiments excited universal attention and unbounded applause."1

The decomposition of the fixed alkalies by galvanism, is said to be the most important achievement in his brilliant career. These alkalies, soda, potash, silica, magnesia, etc., had Paris's Life of Sir Humphry Davy, p. 90.

hitherto been regarded as primary elements. Davy demonstrated that they were metallic oxides, compounded with oxygen. It marked an epoch in the advancement of chemistry, and in the progress of the medical art. Eulogiums were showered upon this man by men of science beyond any that man had ever received. The Government vied with learned Senators in doing him honor. It is not at all to be wondered at that such homage should have turned his head. The learned Cuvier declared him to be entitled to a position of the "first rank among the chemists of this or any other age.' This was when Davy had scarcely reached his thirty-third year. Among the principal works of Davy are, "Elements of Chemical Philosophy," "Elements of Agricultural Chemistry," besides many papers on these subjects contributed to the Royal Institution. To the world, Davy is chiefly known as the inventor of the "Safety Lamp," to protect miners against the fatality of mines, from the explosion of what was called "fire-damp" in coal mines. Of so great importance was this discovery to human life in the mines in Great Britain that the English Government took notice of it and conferred a

baronetcy upon him. He was then forty years old, but his work was done. He died in 1829 at Geneva.

The brilliant and important discoveries in Chemistry and certain other collateral branches of Medicine, which we shall have occasion to