Page:A History of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania.djvu/162

 search, an experienced and able experimenter, and it is no disrespect to the memory of Dr. Woodhouse (whose opinion of Mr. Hare as a chymist and a man of science I know to have been extremely favourable) for me to add that I often derived from the conversation of Mr. Hare, at home, views of chymical science and explanations of chymical phenomena, which greatly aided my comprehension of the lectures, and even supplied deficiencies which may occur occasionally in the public philosophical discourses of the ablest men.”

In 1801 Dr. Hare contrived the Oxy-hydrogen Blowpipe, and was awarded the Rumford Medal of the “American Academy of Arts and Sciences.” With respect to the discovery of the “Compound Blowpipe,” it is well known that a claim has been set up in England, and upon this point the following testimony of Prof. Silliman is conclusive in placing the credit where it is deserved: “In December of the year 1801, Mr. Hare communicated to the Chymical Society of Philadelphia his discovery of a method of burning oxygen and hydrogen gases in a united stream, so as to produce a very intense heat.

“In 1802 he published a memoir upon the subject, with an engraving of his apparatus, and he recited the effects of his instrument, some of which, in the degree of heat produced, surpassed anything before known. In 1802 and 1803 I was occupied with him in Philadelphia in prosecuting similar experiments on a more extended scale, and a communication was made to the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia. The Memoir was printed in the ‘Transactions,’ and Mr. Hare’s original Memoir was reprinted in the ‘Annals of Chymistry’ of Paris, and in the ‘Philosophical Magazine’ of London. Mr. Murray, in his ‘System of Chemistry,’ has mentioned Mr. Hare’s results in the fusion of the several earths, &c., and has given him credit for his discovery.

“In one instance, while in Europe in 1806, at a public