Page:A History of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania.djvu/165

 elevated as it was above party feeling, or the causes of national animosity.

The account of this great discovery from the pen of Dr. Chapman may not be superfluous in this connection: “Means of producing a sufficient degree of temperature to melt some of the metals and other refractory substances had long been desired by artists, and hitherto had fruitlessly engaged the attention of chymists. At the suggestion of Mr. Hare, the Chymical Society selected this subject as worthy of examination, and he was appointed to manage the investigation of it. The result of his labors was a discovery which has emphatically been pronounced by a great chymist of Europe to be one of the most important of the eighteenth century.”

From the foregoing exposition of the discoveries of Dr. Hare and Professor Silliman, made with the instrument of the former, we may judge of the originality of the “Drummond Light,” which is only an application of lime to the flame of the compound blowpipe, the intensity of the light under these circumstances being perfectly familiar to these distinguished chemists, and annually shown to their classes before any practical application was made of it.

On the death of Dr. Woodhouse in 1809, Dr. Hare presented himself as a candidate for the Chair of Chemistry, but was unsuccessful in his application. Soon after he was chosen “Professor of Natural Philosophy for the Medical Department but as that position gave no status in the Faculty, he soon accepted the appointment of Chemical Professor in William and Mary College, at Williamsburgh, Virginia, where he continued until his election to the University of Pennsylvania. In 1816 the honorary degree of Doctor of Medicine was conferred upon him by Harvard University.

As a lecturer Dr. Hare was remarkable for the scale of his experiments, which were uniformly successful, and impressed the mind by their grandeur. His apparatus was elaborate, and perfect so far as mechanical skill and ingenuity could accomplish its completion. In galvanism and electricity he invented