WELLS, Wir.r.riot CHARLES, an eminent physi cian and natural philosopher, was born at Charles town in South Carolina in May 1757, his parents having arrived there from Scotland a few years be fore. He was educated at the grammar school of Dumfries in Scotland and in 1770 he went to the university of Edinburgh. In 1771 he returned to Charlestown, where he began the study of medicine. In 1775 he returned to London, and between 1775 and 1778 he pursued his medical studies at Edin burgh. In 1779 he went to Holland as surgeon to a Scotch regiment, and in 1780 he took his degree of M.D. at Edinburgh, the subject of his Thesis being on "Cold." In 1782, Dr. Wells returned to Charlestown, and while he was there he was at the same time a volunteer officer, a printer, a book seller, a merchant, and on one occasion a judge ad vocate. In December 1782, when the king's troops evacuated Charlestown, he went to St. Au gustine in East Florida, where he edited the first weekly newspaper that had appeared in that pro vince. Here he became a captain of a volunteer corps, and manager of a company of officers who had agreed to act plays for the relief of the loyal refugees from Carolina and Georgia. in 1784 he went to London, and after paying a three months visit to Paris in 1785, he settled in London as a physician. In 1788 he was admitted a licentiate of the royal college of physicians, and in 179,3, a fel low of the royal society, to whose transactions he communicated several interesting papers.
In the year 1812, Dr. Wells began a series of experiments on dew, and after they were completed, he published, in August 1815, his Essay on Dew, which contains some important discoveries upon which his reputation as a philosopher chiefly rests. In 1816 the royal society of London adjudged to him the Rumford medals for these discoveries, of which we have already given a full account in our Article METEOROLOGY, Vol. X I I I. 13. 185-188.
In 1814, Dr. Wells was admitted a fellow of the royal society of Edinburgh. The ardour with which he had pursued his experiments on dew, and the exposure of himself to the open air which they required, injured his health, which he never again recovered. He died on the 18th September 1817, in the 64th year of his age.
The only work of any importance besides his Essay on Dew, is his " Essay upon Single Vision with Two Eyes," Lond. 1792, a work of great merit, but not free from considerable errors. His other writings consist of papers of temporary in terest in the Philosophical Transactions and in the Periodical Journals. See the Gentlemen's Maga zine for Nov. 1817, for a more minute account of his life.