Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley

by Joseph Priestley

In the year 1800 he was chiefly employed in experiments, and writing an account of them for various publications. In this year also he published his treatise in defence of Phlogiston, he revised his Church History, the two first volumes of which are now reprinted with considerable additions, and he added to and improved his Notes on the Scriptures.

He spent some time in the spring of 1801 in Philadelphia, during his stay there he had a violent attack of fever which weakened him exceedingly, and from the effects of which he never perfectly recovered. Added to this the fever and ague prevailed at Northumberland and the neighbourhood, for the first time since his settlement at the place. He had two or three attacks of this disorder; which though they were not very severe, as he had never more than three fits at a time, retarded his recovery very much. He perceived the effect of his illness in the diminution of his strength, and his not being able to take as much exercise as he used to do. His spirits however were good, and he was very assiduous in making experiments, chiefly on the pile of Volta, the result of which he sent an account of to Nicholson’s Journal and the Medical Repository.

In 1802 he began to print his Church History, in consequence of the subscription raised by his friends in England as before stated. Besides printing three volumes of that work, he wrote and printed a treatise on Baptism, chiefly in answer to the observations of Mr. Robinson on the subject. He likewise made some experiments, and replied to some remarks of Mr. Cruikshank in defence of the Antiphlogistic theory.

I am now to describe the last scene of his life, which deserves the reader’s most serious consideration, as it shews the powerful effect of his religious principles. They made him, not resigned to quit a world in which he no longer had any delight, and in which no hope of future enjoyment presented itself, but chearful in the certainty of approaching dissolution, and under circumstances that would by the world in general have been considered as highly enviable. They led him to consider death as the labourer does sleep at night as being necessary to renew his mental and corporeal powers, and fit him for a future state of activity and happiness. For though since his illness in Philadelphia in 1801 he had never recovered his former good state of health, yet he had never been confined to his bed a whole day by sickness in America until within two days of his death, and was never incapacitated for any pursuit that he had been accustomed to. He took great delight in his garden, and in viewing the little improvements going forward in and about the town. The rapidly increasing prosperity of the country, whether as it regarded its agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, or the increasing taste for science and literature, were all of them to him a source of the purest pleasure. For the last four years of his life he lived under an administration, the principles and practice of which he perfectly approved, and with Mr. Jefferson, the head of that administration, he frequently corresponded, and they had for each other a mutual regard and esteem. He enjoyed the esteem of the wisest and best men in the country, particularly at Philadelphia, where his religion and his politics did not prevent his being kindly and cheerfully received by great numbers of opposite opinions in both, who thus paid homage to his knowledge and virtue. At home he was beloved; and besides the advantages of an excellent library, to which he was continually making additions, and of a laboratory that was amply provided with every thing necessary for an experimental chemist, he was perfectly freed, as he had happily been through life, in consequence of my mother’s ability and attention, from any attention to worldly concerns; considering himself, as he used to express himself, merely as a lodger, having all his time to devote to his theological and philosophical pursuits. He had the satisfaction of witnessing the gradual spread of his religious opinions, and the fullest conviction that he should prevail over his opponents in chemistry. He looked forward with the greatest pleasure to future exertions in both these fields, and had within the last month or six weeks been projecting many improvements in his apparatus, which he meant to make use of upon the return of warm weather in the spring. Notwithstanding, therefore, the many trials he underwent in this country, he had still great sources of happiness left, unalloyed by any apprehension of any material defect in any of his senses, or any abatement of the vigour of his mind. Consistent with the above was his declaration that, excepting the want of the society of Mr. L, Mr. B. and two or three other particular friends, which however was made up to him, in some, though in a small degree by their regular correspondence, he had never upon the whole spent any part of his life more happily, nor, he believed, more usefully.

The first part of his illness, independent of his general weakness, the result of his illness in Philadelphia in 1801, was a constant indigestion, and a difficulty of swallowing meat or any kind of solid food unless previously reduced by mastication to a perfect pulp. This gradually increased upon him till he could swallow liquids but very slowly, and led him to suspect, which he did to the last, that there must be some stoppage in the œsophagus. Latterly he lived almost entirely upon tea, chocolate, soups, sago, custard puddings, and the like. During all this time of general and increasing debility, he was busily employed in printing his Church History, and the first volume of the Notes on Scripture; and in making new and original experiments, an account of which he sent to the American Philosophical Society in two numbers, one in answer to Dr. Darwin’s observations on Spontaneous generation, and the other on the unexpected conversion of a quantity of the marine acid into the nitrous. During this period, likewise, he wrote his pamphlet of Jesus and Socrates compared, and re-printed his Essay on Phlogiston. He would not suffer any one to do for him what he had been accustomed to do himself; nor did he alter his former mode of life in any respect, excepting that he no longer worked in his garden, and that he read more books of a miscellaneous nature than he had been used to do when he could work more in his laboratory, which had always served him as a relaxation from his other studies.

From about the beginning of November 1803, to the middle of January 1804, his complaint grew more serious. He was once incapable of swallowing any thing for near thirty hours; and there being some symptoms of inflammation at his stomach, blisters were applied, which afforded him relief; and by very great attention to his diet, riding out in a chair when the weather would permit, and living chiefly on the soft parts of oysters, he seemed if not gaining ground, at least not getting worse; and we had reason to hope that if he held out until spring as he was, the same attention to his diet with more exercise, which it was impossible for him to take on account of the cold weather, would restore him to health. He, however, considered his life as very precarious, and used to tell the physician who attended him, that if he could but patch him up for six months longer he should be perfectly satisfied, as he should in that time be able to complete printing his works. The swelling of his feet, an alarming symptom of general debility, began about this time.

To give some idea of the exertions he made even at this time, it is only necessary for me to say, that besides his miscellaneous reading, which was at all times very great, he read through all the works quoted in his comparison of the different systems of the Grecian Philosophers with christianity, composed that work, and transcribed the whole of it in less than three months. He took the precaution of transcribing one day in long hand what he had composed the day before in short hand, that he might by that means leave the work complete as far as it went, should he not live to complete the whole. During this period he composed in a day his second reply to Dr. Linn.

About this time he ceased performing divine service, which he said he had never before known himself incapable of performing, notwithstanding he had been a preacher so many years. He likewise now suffered me to rake his fire, rub his feet with a flesh-brush, and occasionally help him to bed. In the mornings likewise he had his fire made for him, which he always used to do himself, and generally before any of the family was stirring.

In the last fortnight in January he was troubled with alarming fits of indigestion; his legs swelled nearly to his knees, and his weakness increased very much. I wrote for him, while he dictated, the concluding section of his New Comparison, and the Preface and Dedication. The finishing this work was a source of great satisfaction to him, as he considered it as a work of as much consequence as any he had ever undertaken. The first alarming symptom of approaching dissolution was his being unable to speak to me upon my entering his room on Tuesday morning the 31st of January. In his Diary I find he stated his situation as follows: “Ill all day—Not able to speak for near three hours.” When he was able to speak he told me he had slept well, as he uniformly had done through the whole of his illness; so that he never would suffer me, though I frequently requested he would do it, to sleep in the same room with him; that he felt as well as possible; that he got up and shaved himself, which he never omitted doing every morning till within two days of his death; that he went to his laboratory, and then found his weakness very great; that he got back with difficulty; that just afterward his grand-daughter, a child of about six or seven years old, came to him to claim the fulfilment of a promise he had made her the evening before, to give her a fivepenny bit. He gave her the money, and was going to speak to her, but found himself unable. He informed me of this, speaking very slowly a word at a time; and added, that he had never felt more pleasantly in his whole life than he did during the time he was unable to speak. After he had taken his medicine, which was bark and laudanum, and drank a bason of strong mutton broth, he recovered surprizingly, and talked with cheerfulness to all who called upon him, but as though he was fully sensible that he had not long to live. He consented for the first time that I should sleep in the room with him.

On Wednesday, February 1, he writes, “I was at times much better in the morning: capable of some business: continued better all day.” He spake this morning as strong as usual, and took in the course of the day a good deal of nourishment with pleasure. He said, that he felt a return of strength, and with it there was a duty to perform. He read a good deal in Newcome’s Translation of the New Testament, and Stevens’s History of the War. In the afternoon he gave me some directions how to proceed with the printing his work in case he should die. He gave me directions to stop the printing of the second volume, and to begin upon the third, that he might see how it was begun, and that it might serve as a pattern to me to proceed by.