Chemistry has often been pressed into the service of medicine. In the years following Lavoisier's chemical revolution, the attention of chemists focused upon gases. Thomas Beddoes (1760–1808) developed a research programme that explored the therapeutic effects of different gases in the treatment of tuberculosis and other diseases. Beddoes was inspired by the discoveries of Joseph Priestley, employed young Humphry Davy as an assistant in his researches, received advice and encouragement from Erasmus Darwin, and used pneumatic apparatus designed by James Watt. He also engaged in efforts directed at social reform and at reforms in public health, being especially concerned with the condition of the poor. His Pneumatic Institution in Bristol was at one and the same time a research centre and a health clinic. This paper explores the interaction between chemistry and medicine in Beddoes’ career, within a context of scientific and social ferment.
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Ibid.
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Chemical Experiments and Opinions extracted from a Work Published in the Last Century, p. 61, Oxford (1790), Beddoes reprinted this passage in his AiLetter to Erasmus Darwin, M.D. on a New Method of Treating Pulmonary Consumption, and Some Other Diseases hitherto found Incurable, p. 29 n. Bristol [1793].
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Beddoes to Giddy (29 June 1796), MS DG 42/20. The simplified apparatus is described by Watt in Considerations, part 5 (1796).
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Beddoes to Giddy (31 July 1796), MS DG 42/33.
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Beddoes to Giddy (23 August 1796), MS DG 42/7.
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48.
See Note 26 above.
49.
MitchillS. L., Remarks on the Gaseous Oxyd of Azote and on the Effects it Produces, New York (1795).
50.
Beddoes published Mitchill's views in Appendix I to Considerations (1795): Note 39 above.
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Ibid. andMonthly Review20(2), 490–493(1796).
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57.
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64.
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65.
Beddoes to J. Wedgwood (19 June1807) (W/M).
66.
For background seeQuinaultR. and StevensonR. J.(eds), Popular Protest and Public Order, London (1974), including Stevensor Food riots In England, 1792–1818, pp. 33–74.
