Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/838

820 house (1770-1809) was at the time Professor of Chemistry in the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania, of which he was a graduate. This chair had been held by Dr. James Hutchinson, and on his death, in 1793, Dr. Joseph Priestley, who arrived from England a few months later, was invited to succeed him, but he declined, preferring retirement at Northumberland, and Dr. Woodhouse was chosen instead. He was more of a physician than a chemist, and most of his writings were on medical topics, but he edited Chaptal's Elements of Chemistry and other works. He is said to have been the first to prove by comparative experiments the superiority of anthracite coal from Pennsylvania over bituminous coal from Virginia for intensity and regularity of heating power.

The first vice-president, Felix Pascalis-Ouvrière (1750-1840), had an interesting career. He was born in France, where he received his medical education, but emigrated to Santo Domingo, and while practicing his profession there acquired an extensive knowledge of botany and other branches of natural history. In 1793 a revolt among the negroes compelled Pascalis to take refuge in the United States: he settled first in Philadelphia and afterward in New York, where he aided in founding the Linnæan Society of New York. The second vice-president. Dr. John Redman (1722-1808), was one of the foremost practitioners of medicine in Philadelphia, and from 1786 was President of the Philadelphia College of Physicians.

Among the most active members of the Philadelphia Chemical Society were Priestley, Hare, and Seybert. The ambition of the members is shown by the circumstance that a standing committee in 1802 was prepared to "annalize every mineral production" sent to them, free of expense. The meeting held October 24, 1801, was made memorable by the appointment of a committee for the "discovery of means by which a greater concentration of heat might be obtained for chemical purposes." One of the committee, Robert Hare, then only twenty years of age, reported to the society on December 10th his invention of the "hydrostatic blowpipe." Hare's remarkable paper was printed in a small pamphlet of thirty-four pages with the title. Memoir on the Supply and Application of the Blowpipe, containing an account of a new method of supplying the blowpipe either with common air or oxygen gas. Hare's invention yielded a fruitful harvest of discoveries and alone justified the existence of the first of chemical societies; his subsequent career as Professor of Chemistry in the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania from 1818 to 1847 is well known.

2. The Columbian Chemical Society of Philadelphia was founded in the month of August, 1811, by a "number of persons