In concluding his paper, he mentions that he has begun experiments on the alkaline earths.
“From analogy alone it is reasonable to expect that the alkaline earths are compounds of a similar nature to the fixed alkalies, peculiar highly combustible metallic bases united to oxygen. I have tried some experiments upon barytes and strontites, and they go far towards proving that this must be the case.”
“Barytes and strontites have the strongest relations to the fixed alkalies of any of the earthy bodies; but there is a chain of resemblances through lime, magnesia, glucina, alumina, and silex. And by the agencies of batteries sufficiently strong, and by the application of proper circumstances, there is no small reason to hope that even these refractory bodies will yield their elements to the methods of analysis by electrical attraction and repulsion.”
Although certain of the conjectures with which the paper terminates have been proved to be erroneous, others have been shown to be sound. Thus he points out that the metals of the alkalis will undoubtedly prove powerful agents for analysis:
“Having an affinity for oxygen stronger than any other known substances they may possibly supersede the application of electricity to some of the undecompounded bodies.”
Such is a brief summary of the contents of one of the most classical papers in the Philosophical Transactions. Its publication created an extraordinary sensation, not less profound, and certainly more general from the very nature of the subject, than that which followed his first Bakerian lecture. That potash and soda should contain metals—and such metals!—was undreamt of, and was a shock to the settled convictions of persons who, like the Aberdonian professor, declared that this “ane Davy was a vera troublesome person in chemistry.”
But this “troublesome person” had well nigh ceased from troubling any more. Almost immediately after the delivery of his lecture he collapsed—struck down by an illness which nearly proved fatal, and for weeks his life hung on a thread. He had been in a low feverish condition for some time previously, and a great dread had fallen upon him that he should die before he had completed his discoveries. It was in this condition of body and mind that he applied himself to the task of putting together an account of his results. Four days after this was given to the world he took to his bed, and he remained there for nine weeks. Such a blow following hard on such a triumph, aroused the liveliest sympathy. The doors of the Royal Institution were beset by anxious inquirers. His physicians, Babington, Frank, and Baillie, tended him with the greatest assiduity. Mrs. Greenwood, the housekeeper, and his cousin, Edmund Davy, nursed him night and day. So great was the popular feeling that, when he was at the worst, written reports of his condition at various periods of the day had to be posted in the hall. The strength of the feeling may be gleaned, too, from the sentences with which Dr. Dibdin began his lecture introductory to the session of 1808:—
“The Managers of this Institution have requested me to impart to you that intelligence, which no one who is alive to the best feelings of human nature can hear without the mixed emotions of sorrow and delight.
“Mr. Davy, whose frequent and powerful addresses from this place, supported by his ingenious experiments, have been so long and so well known to you, has for the last five weeks been struggling between life and death. The effects of these experiments recently made in illustration of his late splendid discovery, added to consequent bodily weakness, brought on a fever so violent as to threaten the extinction of life. Over him it might emphatically be said in the language of our immortal Milton, that
‘... Death his dart
Shook, but delayed to strike.’“If it had pleased Providence to deprive the world of all further benefit from his original talents and intense application there has certainly been sufficient already effected by him to entitle him to be classed among the brightest scientific luminaries of his country.”
After having given an outline of Davy’s investigations “at the particular request of the Managers,” Dr. Dibdin proceeds:—
“These may justly be placed amongst the most brilliant and valuable discoveries which have ever been made in chemistry, for a great chasm in the chemical system has been filled up; a blaze of light has been diffused over that part which before was utterly dark; and new views have been opened, so numerous and interesting, that the more any man who is versed in chemistry reflects on them, the more he finds to admire and to heighten his expectation of future important results.
“Mr. Davy’s name, in consequence of these discoveries, will be always recorded in the annals of science amongst those of the most illustrious philosophers of his time. His country with reason will be proud of him, and it is no small honour to the Royal Institution that these great discoveries have been made within its walls; in that laboratory, and by those instruments, which from the zeal of promoting useful knowledge have, with so much propriety, been placed at the disposal and for the use of its most excellent professor of chemistry.”
Dr. Dibdin then informs his auditors that Davy’s illness, severe as it had been, was now beginning to abate, and that it may be reasonably hoped that the period of convalescence was not very remote.