CHAPTER V.
SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERERS AND MECHANICIANS.
If great proficiency in tongues, skill to depicture human thought and character, and enthusiastic devotion to art, he worthy of our admiration, the toiling intelligences who have taught us to subdue the physical world, and to bring it to subserve our wants and wishes, claim scarcely less homage. Art and literature could never have sprung into existence if men had remained mere strugglers for life, in their inability to contend with the elements of nature, because ignorant of its laws; and an acquaintance with the languages of tribes merely barbarous would have been but a worthless kind of knowledge. To scientific discoverers—the pioneers of civilization, who make the world worth living in, and render man’s tenancy of it more valuable by every successive step of discovery—our primary tribute of admiration and gratitude seems due. They are the grand revealers of the physical security, health, plenty, and means of locomotion, which give the mind vantage-ground for its reach after higher refinement and purer pleasures.
Should the common observation be urged, that many of the most important natural discoveries have resulted from accident, let it be remembered, that, but for the existence of some of our race, more attentive than the rest, Nature might still have spoken in vain, as she had undoubtedly done to thousands before she found an intelligent listener, in each grand instance of physical discovery. Grant all the truth that may attach to the observation just quoted, and yet the weighty reflection remains—that it was only by men who, in the sailor’s phrase, were “on the look-out,” that the revelations of Nature were caught. The natural laws were in operation for ages, but were undiscovered, because men guessed rather than inquired, or lived on without heed to mark, effort to comprehend, industry to register, and, above all, without perseverance to proceed from step to step in discovery, till entire truths were learnt. That these have been the attributes of those to whom we owe the rich boon of science, a rapid survey of some of their lives will manifest.
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.