BEDDOES, Md-ciz, Thomas, English phy sician and author: b. Shiffnal Shropshire, 13 April 1760; d. 24 Dec. 1808. He distinguished himself both at school and at Oxford by his knowledge of ancient and modern languages and literature. The great discoveries in physics, chemistry and physiology irresistibly attracted him. He continued his studies with success in London and Edinburgh. In his 26th year he took his doctor's degree, afterward visited Paris, and formed an acquaintance with Lavoisier. On his return he was 'appointed professor of chemistry at Oxford. There he published some excellent chemical treatises and observations on the calculus, scurvy, consump tion, catarrh and fever. Dazzled by the splen did promises of the French Revolution, he offended some of his former admirers, and excited such a clamor against him by the pub lication of his political opinions that he re signed his professorship. He then composed his 'Observations on the Nature of Demon strative Evidence,' in which he endeavored to prove that mathematical reasoning proceeds on the evidence of the senses, and that geometry is founded on experiment. He also published
the 'History of Isaac Jenkins,' which was in tended to impress useful moral lessons on the laboring classes in an attractive manner. Af ter his marriage in 1794 he formed the plan of a pneumatic institution for curing diseases, par ticularly consumption, by means of factitious airs or gases. With the assistance of the celebrated Josiah Wedgewood, he succeeded in opening this institution in 1798. As super intendent of the whole, he engaged young Humphry Davy, the foundation of whose future fame was laid here. The chief purpose of the institution, however, was never realized, and Beddoes' zeal gradually relaxed, so that he relinquished it a year before his death. In the last years of his life he acquired considerable reputation by his in three volumes.