Beddoes, Thomas

(b. Shifnal, Shrophirem, England, 13 April 1760; d. Clifton, England, 24 December, 1808)

medicine, chemistry.

Beddoes’ father was a tanner and wished his son to follow the same trade, but the boy proved bookish. His grandfather, a man of parts, recognized his abilities and insisted that he be trained for a profession. Beddoes therefore attended Bridgnorth Grammar School, Shropshire, and in 1776 went to Pembroke College, Oxford. There, while reading medicine, he became interested in chemistry and in modern languages. On going down from Oxford, he translated, or edited translations of, works by Bergman, Scheele, and Spallanzani. In 1784 he went to Edinburgh for three years and then paid a visit to France, where he met Lavoisier, to whose antiphlogistic chemistry he adhered. In 1788 Beddoes was appointed reader in chemistry at Oxford and attracted audiences larger than any lecturer since the thirteenth century. He supported the French Revolution, and his strong political views partly explain his resignation from Oxford in 1792. In 1794 he married Anna Edgeworth, sister of the novelist Maria Edgeworth; their eldest son, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, became a famous poet.

Beddoes’ name is not perpetuated in any important discovery in chemistry or in medicine: while perhaps his most important contribution to science was his discovery of Humphry Davy, he was well known in his own day for his popular works on preventive medicine and his investigations of the use of gases in treating diseases. Among his publications are Isaac Jenkins, a moral tale (1792); Essay on Consumption (1799); and Hygëia, a series of essays describing the regimen necessary for avoiding disease (1802–1803). Beddoes considered it deplorable that although about one person in a million died annually of hydrophobia, and one in a hundred of tuberculosis, everybody dreaded hydrophobia and took tuberculosis for granted. He observed that some occupations carried great risks of consumption and declared that in civilized societies victims were thus sacrificed to alcohol, to fashion, and to commerce. Beddoes agreed that it was foolish to encourage people to doctor themselves; but to persuade them to adopt a healthy way of life, and to learn some biology, seemed eminently reasonable.

He called on doctors to produce more case studies and censured hospitals particularly for their failure to develop adequate statistics; when an adequate supply of genuine facts was available, medicine could be brought to the level of chemistry or astronomy, where charlatans stood no chance of success. Chemistry interested Beddoes primarily because he believed that true medical science must have a chemical basis. With this in mind, in 1798 he set up his Pneumatic Institution at Clifton for treating diseases by the administration of gases. He appointed Davy, then age nineteen, superintendent, and published his first essays on heat and light; like Davy, Beddoes adhered to the kinetic theory of heat. After Davy’s departure in 1801, the Pneumatic Institution became a clinic where advice was given on preventive medicine.

Beddoes was associated with the Lunar Society of Birmingham during its last years. His mind was restless, and he died unhappy at his lack of solid achievement.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. The History of Isaac Jenkins, and of the Sickness of Sarah his wife, and their three children (Madeley, Shropshire, 1792); An Essay on the Causes, Early Signs, and Prevention of Pulmonary Consumption (Bristol, 1799); Hygëia; or Essays Moral and Medical on the Causes Affecting the Personal State of Our Middling and Affluent Classes, 3 vols. (Bristol, 1802–1803). The following works were written by Beddoes and James Watt: Considerations on the Medicinal Use of Factitious Airs, and on the Manner of Obtaining Them in Large Quantities (Bristor, 1794; 2nd ed., 1795; 3rd ed., 1796); Medical Cases and Speculations; Including Parts IV and V of Considerations on the Medicinal Powers, and the Production of Factitious Airs (Bristor, 1796). With Beddoes as editor: Chemical Experiments and Opinions, Extracted from a Work Published in the Last Century [Mayow’s experiments] (Oxford, 1790): Contributions to Physical and Medical Knowledge, Principally From the West of England (Bristol, 1799).

II. Secondary Literature. Works on Beddoes are J. E. Stock, Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Beddoes, M.D. (London, 1811), which contains a bibliography of Beddoes’ writings; F. F. Cartwright, The English Pioneers of Anaesthesia (Bristol, 1952), pp. 49–164; E. Robinson, “Thomas Beddoes, M.D., and the Reform of Science Teaching in Oxford,” in Annals of Science, 11 (1955), 137–141; Editorial, in Endeavour, 19 (1960), 123–124; and R. E. Schofield, The Lunar Society of Birmingham (Oxford, 1963), pp. 373–377.

David M. Knight