SIR HUMPHREY DAVY,
The son of a wood carver of Penzance, was apprenticed by his father to a surgeon and apothecary of that town, and afterwards with another of the same profession, but gave little satisfaction to either of his masters. Natural philosophy had become his absorbing passion; and, even while a boy, he dreamt of future fame as a chemist. The rich diversity of minerals in Cornwall offered the finest field for his empassioned inquiries; and he was in the habit of rambling alone for miles, bent upon his yearning investigation into the wonders of Nature. In his master’s garret, and with the assistance of such a laboratory as he could form for himself from the phials and gallipots of the apothecary’s shop, and the pots and pans of the kitchen, he brought the mineral and other substances he collected to the test. The surgeon of a French vessel wrecked on the coast gave him a case of instruments, among which was one that he contrived to fashion into an air-pump, and he was soon enabled to extend the range of his experiments; but the proper use of many of the instruments was unknown to him.
A fortunate accident brought him the acquaintanceship of Davies Gilbert, an eminent man of science. Young Davy was leaning one day on the gate of his father’s house, when a friend, who was passing by with Mr. Gilbert, said, “That is young Davy, who is so fond of chemistry.” Mr. Gilbert immediately entered into conversation with the youth, and offered him assistance in his studies. By the kind offices of his new friend he was afterwards introduced to Dr. Beddoes, who had formed a pneumatic institution at Bristol, and was in want of a superintendent for it. At the age of nineteen Davy received this appointment, and immediately began the splendid course of chemical discovery which has rendered his name immortal as one of the greatest benefactors as well as geniuses of the race.
At twenty-one he published his “Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide, and its respiration.” The singularly intoxicating quality of this gas when breathed was unknown before Davy’s publication of his experiments in this treatise. The attention it drew upon him from the scientific world issued in his being invited to leave Bristol, and take the chair of chemistry which had just been established in the London Royal Institution. Although but a youth of two-and-twenty, his lectures in the metropolis were attended by breathless crowds of men of science and title; and, in another year, he was also appointed Professor of Chemistry to the Board of Agriculture. His lectures in that capacity greatly advanced chemical knowledge, and were published at the request of the Board. When twenty-five he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and, on the death of Sir Joseph Banks, was made its President by a unanimous vote. It was in the delivery of his Bakerian lectures, before this learned body, that he laid the foundation of the new science called “electro-chemistry.” The Italians, Volta and Galvani, had some years before discovered and made known the surprising effects produced on the muscles of dead animals by two metals being brought into contact with each other. Davy showed that the metals underwent chemical changes, not by what had been hitherto termed “electricity,” but by affinity; and that the same effects might be produced by one of the metals, provided a fluid were brought to act on its surface in a certain manner. The composition and decomposition of substances by the application of the galvanic energy, as displayed in the experiments of the young philosopher, filled the minds of men of science with wonder.
His grand discoveries of the metallic bases of the alkalies and earths, of the various properties of the gases, and of the connexion of electricity and magnetism, continued to absorb the attention of the scientific world through succeeding years; but a simple invention, whereby human life was rescued from danger in mines, the region whence so great a portion of the wealth of England is derived, placed him before the minds of millions, learned and illiterate, as one of the guardians of man’s existence. This was the well-known “safety lamp,” an instrument which is provided at a trifling expense, and with which the toiling miner can enter subterranean regions unpierceable before, without danger of explosion of the “fire-damp,” so destructive, before this discovery, to the lives of thousands. The humblest miner rejects any other name but that of “Davy Lamp” for this apparently insignificant protector; and ventures, with it in his hand, cheerfully and boldly into the realms of darkness, where the “black diamonds” lie so many fathoms beneath the surface of the earth, and, not seldom, under the bed of the sea. The proprietors of the northern coal mines presented the discoverer with a service of plate of the value of £2000, at a public dinner, as a manifestation of their sense of his merits. He was the first person knighted by the Prince Regent, afterwards King George IV., and was a few years after raised to the baronetage. Such honours served to mark the estimation in which he was held by those who had it in their power to confer them; but Davy’s enduring distinctions, like those of the unequalled Newton, are derived from the increase of power over nature, which he has secured for millions yet unborn, by the force of his genius, girt up, tirelessly by Perseverance, till its grand triumphs were won.
From this hasty survey of the magnificent course of one of the great penetrators into the secrets of nature, and preservers of human life, let us cast a glance on the struggles of one who has been the means of multiplying man’s hands and fingers—to use a strong figure—of opening up sources of employment for millions, and of showing the road to wealth for thousands.