Thomas Beddoes, MD 1760-1808: Chemist, Physician, Democrat Dorothy A . Stansfield, Chemists and Chemistry Series. D. Reidel Publishing Company, Boston. MA, 1984. xx 306 pp. 14.8 X 22.2 cm. $54.00.
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Stansfield began her study, clearly as a laborof love,entirelytosatisfy her owncuriosity, and she continued it "without being connected with any learning institution". Her original aim was to trace in greater detail the part Thomas Beddoes, a chemist, played in making known to the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge the work of the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, and, ingeneral, German ideas and writings. However, she widened her scope and eventually produced this eminently readable and meticulously researched and documented book-the first full-length biography of Beddoes, who died "at the age of forty-eight, a disappointed and lonely man". John Edmonds Stock devoted a large part of his "Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Beddoes" (John Murray: London, 1811)t o a summary of Beddoes' publications and neglected his nonmedical activities, thus obscuring much that was important and significant in Beddoes' life. Therefore. Stamfield's book is especially welcome and will be of value to the general reader as well as to chemists, historians of science and medicine, and specialists interested in eighteenth century history and literature, educational ideas of this period, the impact of the French Revolution and William Pitt's repressive measures, and social medicine.
Beddoes, who had studied under Joseph Blackat the Edinburgh Medical School, was an able chemist, engaged in a field where new discoveries were being made, a good physician seeking methods of healing and preventing illness, and a vigorous, independent man whose political ideas and sympathy with the ideas of the French Revolution made him a controversial figure whose life has been difficult to document. This hook, in which a thematic rather than a strictly chronological arrangement prevails, shows Beddoes in the context of the scientific and political revolutions of his day. (Parallel chronological tables of events in Beddoes' life and of political and scientific events are provided.) It especially explores his influence on Coleridge and Humphry Davy, whosecareers wereshaped in his laboratory, and his first modern chemistry lectures a t Oxford University, in which he used the new nomenclature and dealt with Lavoisier's work. He conceived and established the first clinical research institute-the Bristol Pneumatic Institute for treating disease by inhalation. Like his educational principles, Beddaes' conception of public health and preventive medicine was entirely modern but unfortunately largely unheeded. In supporting Plutonist geological theories, he drew the analogy between basalts and ore in a smelting furnace. He visited Lavoisier and Guyton de Morveau and was a friend of the members of the Manchester Lunar Society, sharing their outlook but always with his own particular insights as a physician. Although i t is always difficult to assess the importance of someone who influenced others rather than achieved himself, in her
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book Stansfield has drawn an accurate portrait and appraisal of a neglected controversial, multifaceted scientist and humanist who serves as an "example of how the pressures of the years of revolution and repression affected an individual life". We are all in her debt.
George B. Kauffman California State University. Fresno Fresno. CA 93740
Number 9
September 1986
A235
