Brodie's autobiography / Frederick Pollock.

  • Pollock, Frederick, 1845-1937.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Brodie's autobiography / Frederick Pollock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Ms house in Soho-square. There were also breakfasts and dinners, and, in the spring, pleasant gather¬ ings at his country-house near Hounslow. The scientific world has now outgrown in numbers the facilities for enjoying this kind of society, and is, indeed, now sub¬ divided to an extent which makes its organization very different from what it was when the Eoyal Society was the only association of the kind of any eminence. By this time Brodie was fairly ready for practice; had taken a house in Sackville-street, and put his name on the door, and was making his modest £200 or £300 a year from private patients. He at this time belonged to a society called the Animal Chemistry Club/ which consisted of Home, Hatchett, Davy, Babington, Brande, Clift, Children, Warren, and himself. It seems to have been one of those de¬ lightful small societies in which the interest derived from a community of pursuit is heightened by social in¬ tercourse and uninterrupted friend¬ ship among its members. Some interesting biographical details of Brande and Clift occur in this part of the volume; and, in mentioning the unfortunate abandonment of anything like original investigation in chemistry by Mr. Brande, during the middle and latter part of his career, Brodie takes occasion to notice how the prudential considera¬ tions forced upon the attention of a man with a family to be provided for, must interfere with his aspira¬ tions in this respect. Constant labour for remuneration which may not be renounced, must prevent any time being given to pursuits which are of a higher nature, but wThich produce no personal return except fame, and which pay no butchers’ and bakers’ bills. He adds: ‘ If Davy or Faraday had had large families to provide for, they would not have had sufficient leisure, nor sufficient freedom from anxiety, to distinguish themselves as they have done in the line of original research.’ Davy, in the fullest blaze of his reputation, married a rich widow, and was then only thirty-four years old. All his greatest discoveries had been then made and announced. The safety-lamp came in 1815, and Davy lived for fourteen years after that, but did no more. There may, therefore, be too much wealth as well as too little; and it is true, as Sir Joseph Banks said to Hatchett the chemist when he inherited a good fortune, and ceased to work at chemistry, that being a gentleman of fortune is a confounded bad trade.’ Faraday lives (and long may he live to enjoy the repose he has so richly earned) beyond all precedent an example of the highest and noblest self-sacrifice and devotion to the cause of science. Hardly another individual can be named whose discoveries, ranging as they do over so wide an extent of physics, have contributed so largely to the relief of man’s estate.’ Undertaken in the purest spirit of philosophical verity, they have in their consequences led to the greatest practical results, and, above all others, have justified the wrell-chosen motto—TUustrans com- moda vitce—of the Institution within whose laboratories they were made, and which still enjoys the privilege and honour of counting him as its chief prop and choicest ornament. Millions have received general bene¬ fit from the results of his researches, and thousands have found in them the opportunity for private gain; but Michael Faraday, the true centre of all this public advantage, and of all this private wealth, remains in worldly circumstances and in social station what he was—a man for his age and the world to be proud of, and leaving the nation to which he belongs no other excuse for this than the fact that no reward, and no artificial honours, could adequately recompense his services, or in any degree elevate his position. There was another small society to which Brodie belonged, called the Society for the Promotion of Medical and Cliirurgical IvnowT- ledge/ of which Dr. Wells, the author of the beautiful Essay on Dew,’ was the secretary. Brodie mentions him as one of the most remarkable persons with whom it was his lot to become personally acquainted.