Thomas, a physician of equal eminence for his talents and philanthropy, was born at Shifnal, in Shropshire, April 13, 1760. His family was of Welsh extraction. He received the first rudiments of his education at a school in his native town, and afterwards at a seminary at Brood, in Staffordshire. The strength of his intellectual powers was apparent at a very early period; and he was remarkable from his infancy for his insatiable thirst for books, and his indifference to those amusements which usually captivate the attention of children. His rising abilities were justly appreciated by his grandfather; and to this intelligent relative he was deeply indebted for many of the advantages of his early education, and for the decision of his father to educate him for one of the learned professions. When he was only nine years old, the circumstance of an accident which befell his benefactor, and which, after being followed by some remarkable symptoms, terminated fatally, was calculated to make a deep and lasting impression on a mind like that of young Beddoes. By the extraordinary acuteness and interest which he manifested on this occasion, he attracted the notice of Mr Yonge, the surgeon who attended the sufferer; and a foundation was thus laid for the friendship which ever subsisted between them, and which appears to have had a considerable influence in his choice of that profession in which he was destined to run so brilliant a career. At the free grammar-school in Bridgenorth he made rapid progress in classical learning; and when about thirteen years of age, he was placed as a pupil with the Rev. Mr Dickenson, rector of Plymhill in Staffordshire, with whom he continued about two years. On quitting Mr Dickenson, he entered Pembroke College, Oxford, in Michaelmas term 1776. The simplicity of his appearance, and the rusticity of his manners and address, could not long conceal the superiority of his mental powers. The themes and declamations of young Beddoes were remarkable for their elegant Latinity; and he soon acquired distinguished reputation as a classical scholar. Success in one acquisition was to him but an inducement to the possession of another. He was found one morning by a friend, who casually entered his apartment, very busily engaged with a French grammar and dictionary before him; and when his friend expressed his surprise that he should attempt to learn French without a master, he replied that he should be able to conquer the difficulties of the language by himself in about two months. His friend called upon him again at the expiration of that time, and inquired whether he had mastered the language. Beddoes answered in the affirmative, and proved his assertion by reading in English, with perfect fluency, a French book which the latter presented to him. From the French he proceeded to the Italian, which, from its analogy with the former, he acquired with greater ease. The German language presented more serious difficulties; but his perseverance triumphed over them without the aid of a master. He afterwards added the Spanish language to his other acquisitions.

While attending the university, chemistry and the other sciences more closely connected with his future profession were always his favourite objects of pursuit. The splendid discoveries of Black and Priestley, which had opened a new field of discovery, were powerfully calculated to inflame the ardour of his inquisitive and sanguine spirit; and he accordingly soon became perfectly conversant with the new doctrines of pneumatic chemistry, and used to exhibit with great delight the experiments which supported them, to his friends in Shropshire, during the vacations. He was also much occupied with mineralogy and botany; and for the former of these sciences, especially, retained throughout life a remarkable fondness.

Having taken his bachelor's degree at one-and-twenty, he repaired to London, in order to commence the study of his profession. He became a pupil of the celebrated Sheldon, and devoted his time to the details of practical anatomy, and the physiological inquiries connected with it. It was while he was engaged in these studies that he gave to the world, in 1784, a translation from the Italian of Spallanzani's Dissertations on Natural History; a work which, in 1790, went through a second edition. In the year following, 1785, he published a translation of Bergman's Essays on Elective Attractions, the first work to which Beddoes affixed his name, accompanied by numerous original notes, which display an accurate acquaintance with all the modern improvements in the physical sciences. In 1786 he became again known to the public as the editor of Scheele's Chemical Essays. Previous to this, in 1783, he took his degree of master of arts; and, in the autumn of 1784, removed to Edinburgh, where he remained during three successive winters and one summer. Shortly after his arrival, he became a member of the Medical Society and of the Natural History Society of that place, and took an active part in the series of physiological experiments in which some of the members of the former were at that period engaged. To the latter he contributed two papers, one on the Sexual System of Linnaeus, the other on the Scale of Being, both of which have been preserved at full length in Dr Stock's memoirs of his life. At Edinburgh not only did he receive every mark of honourable distinction from his fellow-students which it was in their power to confer, but was also chosen as the organ of their remonstrances with the managers of the Infirmary, on the occasion of a misunderstanding which had arisen between them as to the hours at which they should be permitted to attend; and they were eminently indebted to him for the firmness with which he on that occasion maintained their privileges.

He took his degree of doctor of medicine at Oxford, in December 1786; and in the ensuing summer he visited the Highlands, and also spent a short time at Paris and Dijon, where he cultivated the acquaintance of Lavoisier and Guyton de Morveau. Soon afterwards he was appointed to succeed Dr Austin in the chemical lectureship at Oxford. The success which attended his exertions to inspire a taste for scientific researches was soon apparent, in the overflowing audience attracted by his lectures. Enjoying the reputation of distinguished talents, and surrounded by men of learning and abilities who courted his society, his situation at the university appears to have been truly enviable; and it is difficult to understand the motives which could have led him to relinquish all these advantages for the uncertain prospects afforded by his establishing himself in any other place. The decided part which he took in the political discussions that were agitated at the beginning of the French revolution, seems to have had a principal share in this determination. His opinions were on this occasion expressed with his usual freedom; and the circulation of a political article which he inserted in a Shropshire paper, in an advertisement soliciting relief for the French emigrant clergy, excited a clamour against him, which accelerated his adoption of the step he had previously determined upon.

During his connection with Oxford, he published, in 1790, an analytical account of the writings of Mayow, under the title of Chemical Experiments and Opinions, extracted from a work published in the last century, in which he asserts the claims of that extraordinary man to the discovery of the principal facts on which the modern system of pneumatic chemistry is founded; discoveries which had failed, for upwards of a century, to attract any notice from the philosophic world. In the Philosophical Transactions for 1791 and 1792 we also find three papers by Dr Beddoes; the one containing Observations on the Affinity between Basalts and Granite, in which he rejects the common division of mountains into primary and secondary, and states some strong arguments in favour of the volcanic origin of both; the other giving An Account of some Appearances attending the Conversion of Cast into Malleable Iron, which he supposes to consist in its purification from oxygen, charcoal, and hydrogen, which escape, during the process, in the form of carbonic acid and carburetted hydrogen gases; and, in a paper which forms an appendix to the latter, he relates a variety of experiments which he had made, confirming this theory.

It was about the period of his retirement from Oxford that he published his Observations on the Nature of Demonstrative Evidence, with an Explanation of Certain Difficulties occurring in the Elements of Geometry, and Reflections on Language, 8vo, London, 1793. In this essay he contends, in opposition to the doctrines of the ontologists, and particularly to that of Mr Harris, the author of Hermes, that geometry is essentially founded in experiment; and that mathematical reasoning proceeds, at every step, upon the evidence of the senses; in short, that this science is founded as exclusively upon the induction of particular facts, as mechanics, astronomy, optics, or chemistry.

About the same period he published his Observations on the Nature and Cure of Calculus, Sea-Scurvy, Consumption, Catarrh, and Fever; together with Conjectures upon several other Objects of Physiology and Pathology.

On leaving Oxford, he retired to the house of his friend Mr Reynolds of Ketley, in Shropshire. It was here that he published his admirable History of Isaac Jenkins, a story exhibiting the reformation of a drunkard, and his return to habits of industry. There is, probably, no production of Dr Beddoes which unites so many peculiar excellencies as this inimitable fiction, or which displays at once in so favourable a light the vigour of his genius, his knowledge of the human heart, and the power with which he could command the interest and sympathy of his reader. Its success was immense; repeated editions, amounting to above forty thousand copies, were rapidly sold; and a large impression has since been issued at the request of a society for promoting knowledge by the distribution of useful popular books.

A prospect now opened to him of realizing his favourite scheme of establishing a pneumatic institution, where the medical efficacy of the permanently elastic fluids, the fruits of the modern improvements in chemistry, could be fairly put to the test of experiment; and, after some deliberation, the neighbourhood of Bristol was fixed upon as the most proper place for the purpose. In making the necessary arrangements, he derived material assistance from the cooperation of Mr Edgeworth, the author of Practical Education, with whose family he soon became more closely connected, by marrying one of that gentleman's daughters. The pneumatic institution continued to occupy his attention for many years, in the course of which a great number of publications issued from his pen, illustrating the principles on which he expected it to be useful, and detailing the experiments and the results to which it gave rise. The difficulty at first experienced in the construction and management of the apparatus of this institution, was in no long time entirely surmounted by the friendly assistance of Mr Watt, whose exertions at this critical period are acknowledged in a dedication prefixed to the first part of the Considerations. Mr William Clayfield and Mr Read also contributed their assistance in the invention of different parts of the pneumatic apparatus. At the opening of the institution in 1798, the sums subscribed were found to be very inadequate to the purposes for which it was designed; but by the liberality of Mr Thomas Wedgwood, who offered Dr Beddoes £1,000, he was enabled to carry the plan into immediate execution. All that was now wanted was to procure a superintendent; and he had the good fortune to engage in that capacity a young man who had already given proofs of extraordinary talents, and to whose penetrating genius chemistry has since been so deeply indebted. There needs no other indication to suggest the name of Davy,—a name that will descend to distant ages as associated with so many important discoveries in philosophical science. The history of the pneumatic institution indeed derives considerable splendour from many of these discoveries, which were perfected in its laboratory, and which were first announced to the world through the medium of the publications above mentioned; and in the work entitled Researches Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide, or Dephlogisticated Nitrous Air, and its Respiration; by Humphrey Davy, Superintendent of the Medical Pneumatic Institution, London, 1800. The discovery of the chemical properties of this gas, and of its astonishing effect on the system when respired, were among the first, and must ever be esteemed the most brilliant, of the results of this institution: it raised the most sanguine anticipations in the mind of Dr Beddoes, and called forth all his eloquence in the description of what it already had and might be expected to accomplish. These, like the other splendid visions in which his ardent imagination was but too prone to indulge, have never been realized, and have even created, by their signal failure, an unfortunate prejudice against future attempts to improve the art of medicine by novel methods of treatment founded on chemical or philosophical principles. The original objects of the institution, being found unattainable, were successively abandoned; and it assumed, by insensible gradations, the form of the more common establishments for the relief of the sick; and the prevention rather than the cure of diseases became the principal aim of its conductors. In 1807 it was finally relinquished by Dr Beddoes to the care of Mr King and Dr Stock.

The object which Dr Beddoes had ever most at heart was, to excite a lively and general attention to the means of preserving health, and of repelling the first inroads of disease, by the diffusion of medical knowledge throughout all ranks of the community, as far as they were capable of acquiring it. His attention was uniformly directed to this favourite object, and he suffered no opportunity to escape of enforcing those maxims which tend to prevent the necessity of the interference of his art.

Dr Beddoes has been very justly characterized as a pioneer in the road to discovery. He was more active, however, in exciting the labours of others, than in labouring himself in the field of experiment. He had the imagination of a poet, and could paint in the most vivid colours the sufferings entailed by disease, and enforce with the most powerful eloquence whatever he wished to impress on the minds of his readers. He has been accused of versatility of opinion; but if he was, perhaps, hasty in publishing the first conceptions which he formed, he has atoned for this fault by the remarkable candour with which he retracted them the moment his confidence in them was shaken. Besides his numerous medical works, he was also the author of several political publications which appeared in 1795, 1796, 1797. (Stock's Memoirs of Dr Beddoes, Lond. 1811.)

BED. See BEDA.