Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/375

 DRAPER 2

laborious efforts was he able to accomplish results in this special field.

With too little opportunity for author- ship, save so far as occasional papers on the progress and results of his researches were concerned, only two works stand prominent, one " On the Construction of a Silvered-glass Telescope," the other "A Text-book of Chemistry." These, with his other papers and contributions to scientific periodicals, comprise the bulk of his Literary work. He paid strict attention to his duties as a professor and was eminently qualified to fill the chair of chemistry in the academic department of the university, to which he was called on the death of his father.

It was his habit, whenever the National Academy of Sciences held an annual meeting in this city, to entertain its members in splendid style at his Madison Avenue mansion. At these dinners he almost invariably gave an illustration of some new invention of interest to the scientific world. One of these enter- tainments took place on the night pre- ceding his illness, and was remarkable for the display given of lightning by electricity. The motive force for these displays was furnished by a gas engine of four-horse power, which was situated in the laboratory at the rear of the house. A visit to this laboratory has always been considered an event of no common im- portance by those who have had the good fortune to be admitted to it. All the newest electrical appliances, dynamos, arc and incandescent lamps, induction coils and batteries, were to be found under its roof, to say nothing of the col- lection of delicate instruments required in astronomy, spectrum analysis, and photography. He died November 20, 1882, of pleuro pneumonia, supervening upon exposure to a severe snowstorm in the Rocky Mountains, whither he had gone some months before to make certain scientific observations.

Med. Reg. of the Stat<> of New York, 1882.

Med. an.I Sure. Reporter, I'hila., 1882, vol.

xlvii.

Pop. Sci. Mou., N. Y., 1882, vol. xxii.

17

DRAPER

Draper, John William (1811-1882).

" A native respect for republician institutions" is the reason assigned by an old biographer for John Draper having left England for America. Be that as it may, he was soon equally well known in both countries. Born May 11, near Liverpool, the son of John Christopher and Sarah Draper, his father a Wesleyan minister, he was educated at a Wesleyan school, the Woodhouse Grove Academy. A clever lad, at fourteen he was studying Hebrew and the old divines and meant to be a min- ister, but a strong bent towards natural philosophy and chemistry drew him away, and at sixteen he became one of the first students at the newly-opened London University, whereunto flocked men of high learning from all parts of the world.

But at seventeen, on the death of his father, he had left to his charge a large family, but he bravely took his fathers place, yet went on with his studies, his first original work being accomplished while he labored with Dr. Turner, when he analyzed a fossil hydrocarbon.

His mother's uncle, Commodore Ripley, United States Navy, had settled in Virginia, and in 1833 young Draper went out there and continued his scientific pursuits and studied at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating M. D. from there in 1836, his thesis on "Absorption" winning so high an opinion from the faculty that they had it published in the "American Journal of Medical Sciences." After practising a short time in Meck- lingburg, Virginia, he became professor of chemistry at William and Mary College, Virginia, and soon after occupied the same chair at Hampden Sidney College. Here a fine library and the valuable in- struments collected by Pres. Cushing made Draper joyfully labor from early dawn far into the night, his papers on "Absorption," " Glandular Action, " and equally valuable ones on "Solar Light" and "Thermo-electricity" attracting at- tention throughout Europe and being translated into German.

Almost immediately after taking his