Humphry Davy’s Early Chemical Knowledge, Theory and Experiments: An Edition of His 1798 Manuscript, “An Essay on Heat and the Combinations of Light” from The Royal Institution of Cornwall, Courtney Library, MS DVY/2 (2019)
James, Frank A.J.L. (Author)
Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
Volume: 66
Issue: 4
Pages: 303-345
This paper publishes, for the first time, Humphry Davy’s June 1798 “An Essay on Heat and the Combinations of Light” written in Penzance. It is the manuscript that he sent to Thomas Beddoes which secured for him the position of Superintendent of the Medical Pneumatic Institution in Bristol while aged only nineteen. It is thus a crucial document that increases our understanding about how Davy made that move from Cornwall to Bristol, without which it is highly unlikely that he would have followed the spectacular career trajectory that he did. The “Essay” provides new insights into Davy’s very early chemical reading (especially the English translations of Antoine Fourcroy’s Elémens d’histoire naturelle et de chimie), the extent to which Davy read this (and other texts) in French, the chemical apparatus he used, the experiments he made and the development and retraction of his theory of phosoxyd (later phosoxygen).
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