LIFE OF DR BEDDOES. THEеvening of the 24th of December, 1808, terminated the active and conspicuous life of Dr Beddoes, of Clifton. His biography has been written in an elaborate form by Dr Stock, of Bristol, from whose able work several of the following incidents are taken. Dr Beddoes was descended from part of a respectable Welsh family which had settled in Shropshire; he was born at Shiffnall, a small town in that county, on the 13th of April, 1760. A fondness for books, in preference to the common amusements of childhood, was very early noticed in him; at five years old he read well, and this love for study, and a remarkable promise of talent, led his grandfather, who, although an unlearned, was a shrewd and discerning man, to relinquish the original plan of bringing him up as a tanner, the family trade, and to fit him, by a liberal and university education, for one of the learned professions. When he was nine years old, his grandfather was killed by a fall from a horse, by which his ribs were broken and thrust into the substance of the lungs. This accident often produces an effect which has a very striking appearance; the air which is drawn into the chest during breathing, finds its way through the wounds into the cellular substance of the lungs, and as this communicates with a similar substance which extends throughout the body, the air soon runs over the whole surface, and swells it out with a puffy and crackling tumour. This was the case in the present instance in a very unusual degree; the whole body and limbs were swollen with air, and the features of the face were almost obliterated by it. The strangeness of these appearances, combined with his affection for his grandfather, produced a strong impression on the mind of young Beddoes; he was never out of the sick room; he was always present at the consultations of the medical attendants, and attracted their notice by the acuteness of his inquiries; to the surgeon, who lived near, he attached himself particularly, and became fond of frequenting his shop and amusing himself with witnessing the preparation of the medicines. His companions called him the little doctor, and he himself, from this time, always declared that he would be a physician. After his grandfather's death, he was put to the free grammar school at Bridgenorth; here he displayed the same indifference to the common amusements of his school-fellows which had been noticed in his earlier childhood; he was never seen with a book during play hours, but used to wander about amusing himself with his own thoughts; so that his companions would often inquire among themselves, "Why was he always thinking?" During this period his progress in the classical languages was so rapid, that, at the age of thirteen, when he left the free school, he was considered in acquirements fit for the university. At this time his appearance is said to have been unprepossessing, and his manners remark able for shyness and reserve, feelings which were never entirely effaced in after life, notwithstanding the great intercourse with every variety of mankind into which he was led by his profession. This shyness of manner, as it is usually denominated, this disposition to shrink from close contact with others, this inability to look strangers in the face without uneasy feelings, which show themselves in the constrained expression of the countenance, arises from an anxiety to produce a favourable impression on others, combined with a fastidious dissatisfaction with our own powers and performances. It is generally caused by a familiar intercourse with the choice productions of the greatest minds, to which, as standards of comparison, we are continually referring our own thoughts and actions, and consequently are continually experiencing a painful perception of our own inferiority; hence it is a feeling of studious minds. It is most effectually removed by great intercourse with that description of persons who constitute the mass of mankind, which will withdraw the mind to new standards of comparison, and give us courage by making us perceive, that though we are weak the multitude is weaker. From the free school at Bridgenorth, young Beddoes was removed to the Rev. Samuel Dickenson, rector of Plymhill, in Staffordshire, under whose care he applied with great assiduity to the improvement of his classical knowledge; his play hours were commonly employed in reading reviews. Mr Dickenson, speaking of his mind as it appeared at this time, describes him as remarkable for solidity of judgement, unenlivened by any brilliance of fancy; a curious fact, when it is known how this latter faculty put forth and expanded in after life. From the house of Mr Dickenson he was removed to Oxford, and was entered at Pembroke College in the year 1776, at sixteen years of age; the same habits of studiousness followed him here for which he had been remarkable throughout his infancy and boyhood; he avoided the idle breakfast parties, and the convivial meetings of the students; the lectures of the college tutor were attended by him as a duty, but they were attended regularly, and the strength of his understanding, and his unusual knowledge of the classical languages, speedily made their way into conspicuousness through the uncouthness of his appearance, and the awkwardness of his manners. Soon after entering the university, he began to study the modern languages with his customary avidity; in two months he learned to read French fluently, without the assistance of a master; and Italian and German afterwards yielded to his uncommon powers of acqui sition. Beddoes, however, had a mind which was not likely to be contented by the study of languages. Dr Black, by his celebrated experiments on magnesia, had some time before drawn the attention of philosophers to the study of chemistry, and the interest on this subject had been kept up and heightened by the late discoveries of Dr Priestley. Beddoes was one among the many who, about this time, enter ed eagerly into the study of this improving science; and during one of his college vacations, which he spent at Cheney Longville, in Shropshire, where part of his family still resided, he amused his friends by a short course of lectures, in which he explained the late discoveries in chemistry, and illustrated his explanations by experiments. During these vacations his favourite amusements were shooting and whist; and he is said, at this time of his life, to have been one of the best whist players in England. About the twenty-first year of his age he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts; he now ceased to reside regularly at the university, and came to London, where he attended lectures on anatomy, physiology, and medicine, &c. Physiology, which lets loose the thinking powers in a greater degree than any other department of medical study, became his favourite subject. The dissertations of Spallanzani were at this time little known in England; Beddoes, who was intimately familiar with the Italian language, translated them into English, added a short account of the literary life of the author, and published them in 1784, when he was twenty-four years old. In the winter of 1783, during a short residence in Shropshire, a very destructive fever was raging among the poor of the neighbourhood. Beddoes was extensively consulted about it; the unexperienced science of the young physician was perceptibly su perior to the unscientific experience of the neighbouring practitioners, and the poor of the neighbourhood almost worshipped him. In the autumn of 1784, he remo. ved to Edinburgh, where he spent three years in the medical studies of that university; he soon became conspicuous among the students, and in the second year of his residence there, he was elected president of the Royal Medical, and Natural History Societies. In the discussions, the speeches of Beddoes are said to have been short, and never remarkable for any of the graces of delivery; he was felt, however, to be a man of weight in them, for his remarks were always applicable, clear, and forcible, qualities which are somewhat rare in the extempore effusions of these societies. In the year 1786, the third and last winter of his residence in Edinburgh, his medical studies were interrupted by a short visit to Oxford, for the purpose of receiving his degree of Doctor of Medicine, but he returned immediately afterwards to Edinburgh. At the conclusion of the session, before taking leave of Scotland, he accompanied a friend on a short tour to the Highlands. In the course of the journey he had occasion to spend two nights at a little inn in Perthshire, near to the river Tummel, and at the foot of the mountain Schehallian. A typhous fever was at this time raging in the neighbourhood, and the maid-servant of the inn had been ill with it six days. When Beddoes left her in the morning to ascend the mountain, she was delirious and in a state of great danger; but when he returned in the evening, he found her free from all symptoms of the fever, and ailing nothing but the weakness which it had left. In the day she had been left alone for some time, and in her delirium had escaped unobserved from the house, and had erawled to the brink of the river to relieve her distressing thirst; when she arrived here, she perceived at a distance a herd of cattle, with drovers, coming towards her to cross the bridge; to conceal her nakedness she immediately waded into the water up to her middle, and leaned against a fragment of rock; here she remained several minutes before she was discovered by the drovers, and when she was conveyed back again to the house, it was found that her fever and delirium had completely subsided. In the autumn of the year 1787, Dr Beddoes went over to the continent and spent some time at Dijon, where he became acquainted with Guyton de Morveau; and at Paris, where he was delighted with the merit and modesty of Lavoisier, and the intellect and elegance of his wife. Towards the end of the year he returned to England, and the chemical lectureship at Oxford becoming vacant by the resignation of Dr Austin, he was without difficulty elected in his stead. About this time, in the 27th year of his age, he first became acquainted with some of the most intimate and valuable friends of his after life; among these were Mr Reynolds, Mr Davies Giddy, now member of parliament, and Dr Darwin. With these gentlemen he kept up a frequent correspondence; with the latter chiefly on medical and philosophical subjects, and the proof sheets of the Zoonomia were regularly sent to him for his criticisms. Some of his familiar letters, which were written about this time, nów and then contain passages of very great beauty and power. Thus, in a letter to Mrs Beddoes, describing short excursion which he had been taking with two friends, one of whom was a a sufferer from nervous complaints, he says, "While at Rhayader, the spirit of adventure decided us for the Devil's Bridge: this was leaving home far behind; we took a chaise, traversed long tracts of mountains, and called at most houses in these unfrequented solitudes. We passed no turnpike in fifty miles. There was often no track. At the Devil's Bridge we found wildernesses worthy of a gang of Salvador's banditti. Conceive declivities impenetrably covered with wood; deep ravines cut by rapid rivers; this mass of deep green; the sound of numerous waterfalls; and enclosing all, as if to shut out the world, bare mountains with their crested and corniced summits. The stillness of the woods contrasted strangely with the rapid motion and incessant roaring of the cataracts, of which one is above a hundred feet in length. The sensations excited by this combination are terribly sublime; in nervous people they would be painful. One of our party, as he was crossing the bridge, after a moonlight view of these woods and waters, felt as if a murderer was at his heels, with intent to throw his body into the depth below." Dr Beddoes filled his new office of chemical lecturer at Oxford with great eclat; his lectures were fully attended; his talents gave a popula rity to scientific pursuits, which had been long unknown in this theatre of his efforts; the fellow and the undergraduate were seen sitting side by side on his benches, and the old sleepy university was roused for a short pe riod from its intellectual slumber. In the year 1790, he published an analytical account of the writings of Mayow. The discovery of oxygen, about the same time, by Scheele, Priestly, and Lavoisier, had thrown a surprising light on the na ture of combustion and respiration; this discovery was new to the living generation, but Beddoes found that it had been completely anticipated by Dr Mayow, an English physician, about the middle of the 17th century. The publications of Mayow had been unnoticed, or had been subsequently forgotten, and the fact had now been uttered to the world in apparent novelty. This is often the case with human knowledge; it is found and lost, and found again; like one of those rivers which, after flowing visibly over a certain distance, sink into the ground, and are lost for a time, but afterwards return to the surface of the earth, and again roll along in daylight. Beddoes, to use his own words, employed a few intervals of leisure to brush the dust off this great man's memory, and it is probable, that the frequency and the intentness with which the performance of this task led him to contemplate those phenomena which display the influence of the air we breathe, on life and health, contributed in a very considerable degree to produce his subsequent attempts to discover in artificial airs a new class of remedies for diseases, particularly for those of the lungs, to which they were immediately applied. Dr Beddoes was fond of the study of mineralogy, and introduced a pret. ty copious account of it in his chemical lectures; he was a zealous Huttonian, and in 1791, he communicated to the Royal Society a paper, in which he endeavours to prove that the common divisions of mountains into primary and secondary, is to be rejected, and that both are of volcanic origin; in the same year, he sent another paper to the same society, relative to the conversion of cast into malleable iron; his intimate friend, Mr W. Reynolds, of Shropshire, was the proprietor of a very extensive iron manufactory, and here he made the observations which were the foundation of this essay. When the cast iron has been for some time in a melted state, it heaves and swells, and emits a blue flame; this appearance he explains, by supposing that cast iron contains oxygen and charcoal; that the oxygen combines with a por tion of the charcoal to form fixed air; and that another portion of the char coal is thrown out in an elastic form, that is, into inflammable air, and burns on the surface with a very deep blue flame, on account of the admixture of fixed air. This is surely not a very clear, or very satisfactory account of the phenomenon. Charcoal could not have been converted into an inflammable air without the admixture of hy. drogen, and the source of this Dr Beddoes has not attempted to explain. In the vacation of 1791, he accompanied his friend, Mr Davies Giddy, to his residence in Cornwall, and amused himself with inspecting the mineralogical curiosities of this county. On his way back, he met with an odd adventure in the stage coach, which shows that he had already begun to possess that conspicuousness which in after life he enjoyed so abundantly; the account of it occurs in a letter written by him to Mr D. Giddy, whom he had left in Cornwall. "At breakfast," says he, "I had the gratification of hearing an account of myself incognito. A young man, a templar, I think, said I was gone to town with Sir. -; that I had discovered three volcanoes in Cornwall, and was to explore Devonshire next summer. A lady asked if this was Dr Beddoes of Oxford, and if the author of the intelligence knew him. He replied in the negative. She add |