"Tickets may be had at 25 South Fourth St.
"Price 20 dollars.
"James Cutbush."
This was in the year 1812. Early in 1813, a year after the preceding announcement, there appeared—
"J. Cutbush has the pleasure to announce to the ladies and gentlemen composing his class that the lectures on Chemistry, as well as those which are to follow on Mineralogy and Natural Philosophy, will be given in St. John's Lyceum in a building lately erected at the Corner of Chester and Race, between Eighth and Ninth Sts.
"N.B. The next lecture will be delivered this evening (Saturday) when, at the request of several ladies, the nitrous oxide or the exhilarating gas will be exhibited."
These announcements exhibit a phase in the development of chemical science which is worthy of pause and reflection. Science subjects had taken hold of many persons in the early years of the Nineteenth Century. Some of them became ardent enthusiasts and missioners in the extension of those subjects. As early as 1808 M. Godon gave lectures on Mineralogy, and in 1810 announced a work of two volumes with a quarto supplement of charts. The science of chemistry also had its advocates. Cutbush was evidently one of them, although not the first. This honor belongs to Dr. Patrick Kerr Rogers, father of William B. Rogers, founder and first president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and President of the National Academy of Science, of Dr. Henry D. Rogers, the eminent geologist, and of James B. and Robert E.—both distinguished in the chemical field.
It was in 1802 that Patrick K. Rogers received his medical degree and embarked upon practice. Having spare time, he began public lectures on the sciences, confining himself from 1807 to chemistry. He was very successful. One of his advertisements as it appeared in the Aurora, in 1809, read:
"EVENING LECTURES
MEDICAL AND CHEMICAL
For Gentlemen
DR. P. K. ROGERS
"Having commenced a course of experimental lectures on Chemistry to ladies, proposes to give a similar course to gentlemen at a different hour. Twelve o'clock is the hour fixed for the former, but as the gentlemen of the city are variously engaged in business during the day, an evening hour will be more convenient for them. The evening course is particularly intended to accommodate men who have a taste for scientific information and who cannot, on account of their respective engagements during the day, attend the lectures in the University.