In the memoirs of the Royal Society for 1776, p. 577, M. Bucquet published an analysis of opium, and in the same volume he has given the abridgment of a memoir, which was afterwards published separately in an enlarg ed form, under the title of Memoire sur le maniere dort Ica 4nimaux sont °Peas par dij,rcrcns fluides aeriformes nzephitiques et sur les moyens de remedier aux effete de ces fluides ; precede d'unc histoirc abregie de ces differens fluzdes aeriformes ou gaz. 8vo. 1778.
During all these occupations, M. Bucquet found sufficient leisure for the practice of medicine. His reputation as a lecturer, induced many of the most opulent persons in Paris to employ him as a physician, and from constantly associating with that class of society, he acquired too great a predilection for the manners and luxuries of the great.
This mode of life contributed, probably, along with his severe application to study, and his extreme sen sibility, both of body and mind, to bring upon him those bodily sufferings which embittered the last years of his life. A dreadful depression of spirits, and an obstinate watchfulness, deprived him of that rest which was necessary to his exhausted frame ; and he was frequently obliged to rise in the middle of the night, and fix his mind upon some particular subject, in order to withdraw it from the impulses of a vigorous imagination, which overwhelmed him with too rapid a succession of objects. In April 1779, he was attacked with the most alarming convulsions, and fainting fits, which greatly reduced his bodily strength ; but, in spite of his extreme debility, his ardour for the sciences made him resolve to give his course of chemical lectures at the Faculty of Medi cine. i The heroism with which he fulfilled this resolu
tion, s perhaps unparalleled in the history of science, and scenes more truly affecting were perhaps never witnessed, than those which occurred during the de livery of his last course of lectures. When the hour of lecture approached, the cries wrung from him by bodily pain gradually subsided ; his countenance assum ed a serene aspect ; he tore himself from his bed, and repaired, with a tottering step, to his amphitheatre. In the course of his lecture his utterance was alternately hastened and interrupted, by the excruciating torments which lie suffered, and he was often seen to press him self against the table of his laboratory, to smother the cries of an unsuffe•able agofty, without ever losing sight of the subject of his lectures. His pupils listened to him with affection and admiration, and, with their eyes bathed in tears, they received the last words of a mas ter whom they esteemed and loved. When this course of lectures was completed, a settled melancholy preyed upon the mind of Bucquct : he saw that his talents could no longer be exerted, and that the short period which he had to live must be a period of unexampled suffering. To relieve his bodily agonies, he often took a pint of xther, and more than a hundred grains of opium in a day, but he did not long sustain these violent excitements. He died on the 24th of January 1780. The principal seat of his disorder was in the colon, which was obstructed, schirrous, and ulcerated. His stomach, and other intestines, were inflamed and softened by the effects of oether. (o) BUD. See BOTANY, Part II. p 52.