BEDDOES, THOMAS (1760-18o8), English physician and scientific writer, was born at Shifnal, Shropshire, on April 13, 176o. After being educated at Bridgnorth grammar school and at Pem broke college, Oxford, he studied medicine in London under John Sheldon (1752-1808). In 1784 he published a translation of L. Spallanzani's Dissertations on Natural History, and in 1785 pro duced a translation, with original notes, of T. O. Bergman's Essays on Elective Attractions. He took his degree of doctor of medicine at Oxford in 1786, and, after visiting Paris, where he became acquainted with Lavoisier, was appointed reader in chemistry at Oxford University in 1788. He resigned his readership in 1792. In the following year he published Observations on the Nature of Demonstrative Evidence, and the History of Isaac Jenkins, a story which powerfully exhibits the evils of drunkenness, and of which 40,000 copies are reported to have been sold. About the same time he began to work at his project for the establishment of a "Pneu matic Institution" for treating disease by the inhalation of dif ferent gases. In this he was assisted by Richard Lovell Edgeworth, whose daughter, Anna, became his wife in 1794. In 1798 the insti tution was established at Clifton, its first superintendent being Humphry Davy, who investigated the properties of nitrous oxide in its laboratory. The institution became an ordinary hospital, and was relinquished by its projector in the year before his death on Dec. 24, 1808.
A life of Beddoes by Dr. John E. Stock was published in 181o.