Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/557

Rh the kitchen was safe in his sight, and it remains a wonder to the present day that he did not set the house on fire or poison some of the family by his operations in the kitchen! The breaking of a flask of chlorine at this period nearly suffocated him, and some severe burns by phosphorus suggested greater caution. He was particularly interested in experimenting with the voltaic battery, and succeeded in constructing one with one hundred small pairs of plates, with which he repeated Sir Humphry Davy's experiment of the isolation of potassium. All his efforts were now concentrated upon an attempt to prepare potassium in a chemical way, according to the method proposed by Curadeau. An old graphite crucible, which Bunsen, the director of the mint, gave to him, served as furnace, and, armed with a bellows loaned by the same person, the experiment was tried in the laundry, with his sister as assistant to blow the bellows. Great was his rejoicing when he perceived the balls of metal in the gun-barrel attached to the retort, and the sister was hardly less gratified at the result of their combined efforts. But the young chemist carried on other studies, to the detriment of his Latin and Greek. He constantly had instruction in drawing, to which his father, who himself drew well, attached much importance. He learned to draw from Nature, and his sketch-book always accompanied him on his excursions in the neighborhood and on the Rhine; he even tried painting in oil, and etching, for which he received much encouragement from the painter Morgenstern.

A rich present of antique Roman coins, which a friend of his father made him, increased his desire to collect similar ones to such a degree that he succeeded in getting together all of the coins of the Roman emperors in their order of succession; Roman urns, lamps, legion-stones, which at that time were still found in the ancient Roman encampments of the neighborhood, were also collected, and aroused in him much interest in Roman history. He likewise commenced to occupy himself with German literature, and to make himself acquainted with the poets of the last century, in which studies a young artist, his drawing master, was his guide. He was too young to appreciate the great political movements of the time, yet he always remembered with interest having seen Napoleon I. during his triumphal entry into Frankfort, and later the passage of the allied troops and Cossacks. His father bestowed particular care upon his son's physical development, and upon his strengthening of a naturally weak constitution by regular exercise, riding, fencing, swimming, and boating.

At Easter, 1820, when he had nearly completed his twentieth year, Wöhler graduated at the gymnasium and entered the university. Partly in accordance with his own inclination, and partly because favorable circumstances promised him success, it was decided that he should study medicine.

He spent his first year at the University of Marburg, where his father had also studied, and where many of his father's friends could