Davy : A great Chemist

In some ways this is another indictment upon what is classified as education. Surely the essence of good teaching is to impart HOW to learn, not some one-size-fits-all curriculum. Humphry Davy was an amateur scientist, an exemplar 'natural philosopher' searching for knowledge for it's own reward before venality became the mother of invention. He was born in Penzance, a quaint village perched on the southwest tip of England and immortalized by Gilbert and Sullivan in the 'Pirates of Penzance', on the 17th December 1778. His father, a woodworker of some renown, had a small residual income which enabled him pick and choose his projects, an independence and creativity that may well have influenced young Humphry. Both his mothers' parents had died when she was young and she had been adopted by a local but eminent surgeon, John Tonkin. After the family moved to their estate, Humphry often went to stay with Mr. Tonkin while attending school in Penzance. The teacher there recognized Humpry's ability and he was soon removed to Penzance Grammar school.

A precocious child, Humphry exhibited a passion for literature and history, often climbing on a wagon to declaim the latest tale he had read to his eager classmates. Only 8 years old, he had charisma, “the applause of my companions is my recompense for punishments incurred for being idle.” Living nearby was a saddler called Robert Dunkin who also had a bent for science; he built an electrical machine, Leyden jars, voltaic piles and various models to illustrate the principles of mechanics. Reading and hanging around Dunkin constituted most of Humphry's education. When he was 16 his father died and the following year John Tonkin had him apprenticed to another surgeon, John Borlase, where he worked as a chemist in the apothecary's dispensary; as much experimenting as following instructions.
One winter's day he demonstrated to Dunkin how two pieces of ice rubbed together would generate heat through friction.

In short order, he met Davies Gilbert, who allowed him access to his extensive library; Dr. Edwards, a lecturer at St Bartholomew's Hospital, who gave the young lad access to his laboratory; Gregory Watt, the son of James Watt of steam engine fame, and Thomas Beddoes and Professor Hailstone, two prominent scientists in the new field of geology. Beddoes was in the process of founding the Pneumatic Institute, in Bristol and needed an assistant to help run the laboratory, Gilbert proposed Humphry Davy.
Gregory Watt sealed the deal by giving Beddoes a copy of 'Young Man's Researches into Heat and Light', which Davy had written at the tender age of 19! The institute was founded to investigate the medical powers of factitious airs and gases and Davy was to supervise all experiments.

Two more books followed, detailing his work such as the purification of nitrous oxide or laughing gas. The Earl of Durham, known as Radical Jack, was a patient at the institute, and he also met Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His published work was also gaining attention. In 1799 Count Rumford had set up the Royal Institute, an 'Institution for Diffusing Knowledge'. The first lecturer, Dr. Garnett, had to step down owing to ill-health. Davy's name was proposed and he was elected as assistant lecturer, director of chemistry and assistant editor of the Institute's Journals. The salary (100 pounds plus a room in the house on Albemarle Street, London, plus coal and candles) enabled him to concentrate on his experiments. The following year, 1801, he was nominated Professor of the Royal Institute, and this with no college education.

Davy was a great pioneer in the field of electrolysis. Using Voltaic piles he was able to isolate a whole series of metals starting in 1807; sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, boron and barium. Some 30 years before the brilliant Swedish chemist and tinkerer had discovered chlorine which he called dephlogisticated marine acid, this harked back to Priestley and the idea of phlogiston or soul of the air. Davy was able to prove that chlorine was an element (it was Humphry who named it), and, thus contained no oxygen. He also demonstrated that oxymuriatic acid, Hcl or what we now call Hydrochloric acid, contained no oxygen, in the process upsetting Lavoisier's whole definition of acids as compounds of oxygen. Unfortunately, his work with chlorine, specifically nitrogen trichloride, a compound with similar properties to tear gas and later used to bleach flour, caused him to almost lose his eyesight in an explosion (another scientist, Pierre Dulong, had already lost two fingers and then an eye in two explosions with the same substance, one would think they would learn!)

By 1812, the date of the accident, both Davy's work and lectures had earned him considerable acclaim and he hired Michael Faraday to assist him. That same year he was knighted and gave a farewell lecture to the Royal Institute and married Jane Apreece, a widow with a considerable fortune; not a happy marriage, she seems to have married Humphry principally to gain the title Lady Davy and was unfailingly rude Faraday who she treated as a lower servant. Demonstrating the global nature of science, Davy was invited to France to receive a medal from Napoleon, another who was fascinated by the field, in recognition of his electro-chemical work. While in Paris he was asked to look at a substance which he proved to be an element he called iodine. Davy and Faraday travelled on to Florence where they used the sun's brighter rays (this would never have worked in rainy old England) to burn diamond, proving it to be pure carbon. They went on to Rome and Milan, meeting Alessandro Volta, and Munich, Geneva and Innsbruck, consulting with the finest scientific minds of their day. The trip was cut short after Napoleon, imprisoned on the Mediterranean isle of Elba, managed to escape and landed in France, raising an army.

Back in England, Davy turned his attention to more practical matters such as the problem of coal gas in mines. The Industrial Revolution was gathering momentum and mine explosions were causing great loss of life (and productivity!) Sir Humphry devised a wire gauze shield for the flame, which, while losing some luminosity none the less proved efficacious in reducing mine deaths. The Davy Safety lamp is what he is best remembered for, the first model for which he introduced in 1816, refusing a patent. He did however receive the Rumford medal and, in 1819, was awarded a baronetcy for his work, including several treatises on the nature of acids relating to hydrogen, very influential works throughout the 19th century. Soon after he was appointed the President of the Royal Society. He continued to work with Faraday, a genius who would become more famous than his mentor; Davy said that his greatest discovery was Michael Faraday.

Davy died in Geneva, Switzerland on the 29th May, 1829, still only 50 years old. Death was hastened by the years of inhaling noxious gases and fumes from his experiments. Early in his life he had thought that he would be a poet, Coleridge said that if Davy had not been first in chemistry he would have been first in poetry. A brilliant creative mind, totally self taught, he was truly a pillar of science.

Tobacco : Medicine of Yesteryear

It is strange how a substance can change from good to evil. Tobacco has long been used in the Americas both as a form of drug, usually smoked, and as a medicinal herb. Owing to it's perceived hallucinatory effects it was often used in religious rituals and there are extant depictions of Maya priests smoking tobacco by means of reeds or tubes, a sort of early cigarette. The habit soon spread across America, Northern tribes also used tobacco in ceremonies, often mixed with other drugs, such as mushrooms, to enhance the experience. This practice has parallels with European culture with the burning of incense in churches, the intent being to induce a soporific trance wherein the observer would more readily believe the practices. So popular did it become amongst the Native Americans that they took to carrying bags of tobacco (there were not many convenience stores to pop in and pick up a pack) which they smoked in a pipe, often to seal a bargain when trading.

So what good was it? One use was to mix it with lime and chalk to make toothpaste, rather an ironic utility. In fact, if all the reports were true, it was something of a miracle drug. Applied as a poultice it relieved abscesses, sores and polyps. Breathing in the smell of fresh tobacco relieved headaches. Rubbing leaves inside the mouth cured the common cold while removing lesions on the neck and applying a compress of hot tobacco and salt healed the wound. It is even thought probable that it was used as an anaesthetic for brain surgery (yes, they did trepanning back then!)

In 1492 Rodrigo de Jerez sailed with Columbus and, while on the island of San Salvador in the Bahamas, was presented with some dried leaves with a strange smell which were supposedly valuable. Not realizing their potential, Rodrigo threw them away. 2 months later in November 1492, he and a shipmate, Luis de Torres, were looking for the Emperor of China on Cuba (something of a wild goose chase as it turned out) when they saw some natives smoking the leaves. The two sailors soon learned to roll up palm leaves with tobacco inside and smoke it. Inevitably Rodrigo was hooked and upon his return to Spain was conspicuous by walking around town surrounded by a cloud of smoke. His notoriety caused his arrest and imprisonment by the Inquisition as the Devil's lackey; on his release, 7 years later, however, he found that various friends had also taken up the habit and smoking soon became popular.

As the primary trading nation of the Mediterranean, the Ottoman Empire soon found out about tobacco and it quickly became the current craze. Initially it was prescribed for all manner of ailments but fairly soon the medical community, at that time the Ottomans led the world in medicine, noticed that it caused fatigue, dizziness, made the senses dull and made ones breath stink. Too late to stop it! By 1682 a Syrian judge noted that tobacco use was pervasive throughout Islam by both men and women, even by 5 year old children. Meanwhile back in Western Europe mention is made of a tobacco merchant in Lisbon in 1523 only five years after the Spanish started importing it.

Sir Walter Raleigh is credited with bringing tobacco to England but it was already there before his travels to the New World, brought from Spain and Portugal. Again it caught on like wildfire, to such a worrying degree that in 1604, King James I wrote a polemic stating that smoking was "[a] custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.” Makes you wonder what took the Surgeon-General so long to get the message. The answer, of course, is money.

John Rolfe was the first person to set up a tobacco plantation, at Jamestown, Virginia (named after the the King who was so anti- smoking!) In 1616 2,500 pounds of tobacco were grown in Virgina, a mere four years later that had ballooned to 119,000 pounds, making John and his fellows wealthy men. This variant that he grew, from seeds he had imported from Bermuda, was known as brown gold, and with good reason; by 1880 it estimated that one third of the internal revenue of the United States came from the tobacco excise tax! The following year, 1881, James Bonsack devised a machine to make cigarettes, 13 times faster than a person could hand-roll them, the rest, as they say, is history.

Gordon of Khartoum : Saint or Megalomaniac

As soon as Gordon got back the King of Belgium reinstated his offer of command of the Congo which Gordon agreed to and started packing. The situation in Sudan, meanwhile, had become a major British headache. The people of Sudan had risen up to follow a religious leader, Mohammed Ahmed. He proclaimed himself the Mahdi, a prophesied leader who would destroy the slave trade and give the people a pure Sharia run state. One would have thought this would please the missionary zeal of
Victorian England but it proved rather too popular and threatened to spread to Egypt. The next thing the natives would begin to think they could rule themselves. The Egyptians, or at least the Khedive, had fallen into financial turmoil to which England, then under Disraeli, had responded by bailing them out and installing a team of 'advisors' who, under Sir Evelyn Baring, effectively governed Egypt. By the
end of 1883 the Mahdi was close to controlling most of Sudan and Britain ordered Egypt to withdraw all troops, a difficult task as there were thousands occupying the various forts and garrisons around the country, many cut off. Clearly there was only one man who could save the situation and Victoria pressed the Prime Minister, Gladstone, to let Gordon do his thing It should be stressed that Gladstone
was reluctant, he knew that Gordon was a loose cannon and his brief was, specifically, only to go to the Sudan and assess the best way of achieving the evacuation of the troops, civilians and dependents with the minimum loss of life.

Meeting with Sir Evelyn in Cairo at the beginning of 1884 Gordon both misrepresented his orders and argued forcefully that he could not go a thousand miles into the desert with his hands tied. The result was that he was appointed governor with executive powers and arrived in Khartoum on February 18th. Sir Evelyn Baring was a very able official who became iconic, a member of the banking family he
steered Egypt into the twentieth century as well as any foreign oppressor could but, on this occasion, he does seem to have misread his ability to control Gordon. Faced with a country in open revolt Gordon immediately offered the leading slave-trader, Sebehr Rahma, release from the prison in which he had placed him during his earlier tenure, and materiel to raise an army to defeat the Mahdi. A remarkable
action for an Evangelist. The Egyptian army was more concerned with an uprising led by an army colonel in Alexandria and thus the main body of troops was deployed in the north. Just prior to Gordon's arrival, however, the Mahdi's army, known as the Ansar, meaning helpers, and referred to as dervishes in the West, had overrun 4000 Egyptian troops on the Egyptian border. Armed only with spears or swords they helped themselves to the rifles and ammo. They then went on to defeat another
force of 8000, led by William Hicks, an Englishman. With over 40000 armed men the Mahdi now controlled Western Sudan. In the Eastern part of the country a parallel insurrection by the Hadendoa were so enthused by the Mahdist victories that they overwhelmed yet another Egyptian force, this time commanded by Colonel Valentine Baker, near the Red Sea, effectively leaving only a tenuous connection between Khartoum and Cairo to the north.

Probably inspired by his reception, many of the local tribes thought Gordon was their saviour, he determined, against orders, to fight back, theorizing that Sebehr Rahma still commanded enough loyalty to win back Darfur. The telegraph lines were still open so he dispatched his ideas to London where they were summarily turned down and his original orders to evacuate were reinforced. Unfortunately the
Beja, to the north, now joined in the general melee, making evacuation too dangerous, at least in Gordon's view. Over 2000 of the sick, wounded, women and children had managed to get out but a contingent of Egyptian troops sent to clear the route deserted after firing one round. He asked for reinforcements (not forthcoming) and began to fortify, the siege beginning in a somewhat desultory
fashion on March 18th 1884. Under his command was an able officer, Colonel Stewart who initially led sorties of 200 or so native soldiers as a counteroffensive but the troops ran as soon as they got near the enemy, cited as cowardice on their part it was more likely empathy.

Gordon had surrounded the city with mines which kept the Ansar from mounting an attack while Stewart effectively utilized the few remaining steamers as gunboats to go on forays against the camped Ansar army. Gordon, both by example and oratory, did manage to inspire the populace to manufacture gunpowder, arms and defenses; but, as with any siege, their main enemy was the dwindling supply of food. As the year wore with no relief from Egypt or Britain Stewart went further abroad, at one point recapturing Berber. Unfortunately he was killed in a later skirmish while trying to retake Dongola, a fact that the Mahdi was kind enough to write to Gordon of, with a certain relish and anticipation no doubt.

Back in England public opinion, including Queen Victoria, was building up a head of steam. The people felt, encouraged by anti-government press, that Gordon had been abandoned; there was agitation for an expeditionary force to be sent to his relief. Gladstone and the Liberal government, on the other hand, took the view that Gordon had disobeyed instructions. Gordon had been dispatched to oversee the evacuation, instead he had turned the episode into a personal crusade. The British
government's view was one of logic; why become embroiled in a religious war in a country they did not want to free, at great expense in money and lives, a man that had got himself in trouble. But, heroes are not formed from logic. The siege dragged on through the summer until, finally Gladstone bowed to public (and regal) pressure and ordered Field Marshal Garnet Wolseley to form a Nile Expeditionary
Force. Wolseley was in Alexandria, left over from the successful squashing of the colonel's abortive insurrection, but it still took them until November to get themselves together. Was this on Gladstone's orders? Ambling through Egypt they finally reached the Sudan towards the end of the year where they sent a forward column of camel troops to 'rush' to Gordon's relief. At Metemma, on January 20th 1885, they found four steamships that Gordon had sent at the beginning of the siege. They also received conflicting reports; initially of the dire need for haste and then, two days later a runner came to say that Gordon could hold out for a year if necessary. We do not know what motivated this last message; supreme confidence, morale building or misinformation on the grounds that the messenger would be
intercepted. In any case when they arrived at Khartoum on the 28th it was to find that they were 2 days too late.

The city was in the hands of the Mahdi, along with Gordon's head which was stuck on a spear in a tree to serve as an inspiration to his followers "...where all who passed it could look in disdain, children could throw stones at it and the hawks of the desert could sweep and circle above." The Mahdi's army was decimated and Khartoum retaken while, back in Britain, Gordon was beatified, an icon for all that was great in Victorian England. He died two days before his 52nd birthday to be
immediately eulogized in the fantastic painting by William Joy, 'General Gordon's Last Stand'. Which perhaps exemplifies heroism, not what is but what we want to believe, and the rendition sums up this beliefs of a nation and an era.

Gordon : From China to Sudan

Egypt was nominally under the auspices of the Ottoman Empire but had a deal of autonomy. To the south lay the vast (a million square miles) waste of Sudan and then the jungle and and savanna of Uganda. The region had piqued the interest of the West through the mystery surrounding the source of the Nile and the talk of snow-capped mountains at the Equator. To the Egyptians, the only interest lay
in the slave-trade, a commerce the Victorians were dedicated to eradicating (at least it gave a good cover for colonizing and pillaging). Gordon's job was to organize the area and to his credit he did considerably better than his predecessor, Sir Samuel Baker. Taking a leaf out of past colonial experiences he set up a series of posts, or depots, up the Nile from Khartoum to the Ugandan frontier. The Nile became increasingly difficult to navigate in its upper reaches, cataracts and swamps meant boats spent more time being carried over difficult terrain than floating on water. Gordon built a station at Dufile so that steamships could be assembled to explore what the Victorians called Lake Albert. With
missionary zeal he also set about suppressing the slave trade which went overland from Uganda through the province of Darfur, this was actually the start of their troubles, we are still trying to resolve the mess 150 years later! Arab traders had taken over Darfur to facilitate this trade, greasing palms in Khartoum as well as Cairo. Thus Gordon's efforts, although entirely laudable, cut into one of Egypt's
main sources of revenue; the Khedive had not expected him to be quite so effective in stifling a lucrative business. It was over this subject that the next disagreement arose. The governor of Sudan and Gordon disagreed over the elimination of this loathsome traffic and the Khedive, although not openly supporting the trade, prevaricated in his support for Gordon. Unable to get his way Gordon threw a tantrum and stomped off to London.

The Khedive must have been desperate for British support for no sooner had Gordon arrived home than he received a letter reminding him of his promise to return which Gordon promptly did, negotiating his appointment as Governor-General of all the Sudanese provinces. The whole affair has the tone of a childish spat. In fact the Khedive was desperate; during Gordon's first tenure Egypt and Abyssinia
(Ethiopia) had gone to war resulting in Egypt suffering two humiliating defeats. Arriving back in Khartoum in 1877, Gordon promptly went south to negotiate peace with the Abyssinian king. The king was away fighting the Shoa. The next two years were spent racing around his territory; negotiating peace with the insurgents in Darfur, a quick check on two neighboring provinces, Berber and Dongola, back to the Abyssinian frontier and then returning to Khartoum where he promptly took a round trip to Cairo at the Khedive's behest. All this before air travel, indeed the journeys were long, arduous camel treks, often arriving to find the reported situation totally changed. In 1879 the Khedive was deposed, succeeded by his son, this seems to have had little effect on Gordon however. He went south to Harrar
province, fired the governor for incompetence and corruption, went back to Khartoum and on to Darfur where, once again, the slave-trading warlords had risen up. This time they were defeated in battle and Gordon returned to the Abyssinian border to deal with that problem. The Abyssinians were not impressed, however, instead they imprisoned him in Massawa where he was finally released and returned to Cairo to resign his position in early 1880.

Gordon was exhausted, or so he claimed, the problems of the world had enervated him, no matter that he actively sought those burdens. He retired for some R & R to Lausanne, recuperating on the lake, soothing the stress with the peace of the Alpine peaks. For three weeks; at least that is how long it took before he was cutting a deal with King Leopold of Belgium. I find it hard to believe the king was just wandering by so Gordon must have contacted him. The deal was to run what was then termed the Belgian Congo. The Congo was one of the great disgraces of the Imperialist 19th century. The Belgian throne had been offered as a sop to one of Victoria's close relatives with the effect that the king had ideas above his station, hey, everybody else was getting a piece of Africa, why couldn't he? With an amused tolerance, like dealing with a spoiled child, he was allowed to get a large piece of jungle pretty much slap in the middle, not a piece anybody else hankered after ( at least not until the diamonds were discovered), and seen by the other powers as a useful buffer between France, Germany and Britain. The country was run as the worst sort of plantation, Conrad's book exposed a lot of the atrocities, tens of thousands starved or were worked to death in appalling conditions, and of course, some of the natives were unappreciative. Gordon was offered the job of sorting out the Congo Free State - as it was laughingly called - by King Leopold. A month later, in April, Gordon was offered the position of Commandant in the Cape Colony (South Africa) and then in May the Marquis of Ripon, just appointed Governor-General of India, the jewel of the British Empire, offered him the role of private secretary! I can only imagine his reputation became self-fulfilling. Each offer proved his ability and meant everybody else wanted him to sort out there colonial headaches.

Pondering this plethora of offers, he chose the last, setting sail for India. He had hardly arrived, however, when he promptly resigned, yet another childish tantrum - maybe he didn't like the food. Anybody else would have been shipped home and shelved but instead he was invited to China by Sir Robert Hart, the inspector-general of customs. Once in Beijing he renewed old contacts - a Victorian networking, and did a little shuttle diplomacy between China and Russia to stop an outbreak of hostilities. Having staved off war he returned to England where he was quickly dispatched to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean as Commander of the Royal Engineers. Amazingly he stayed put on the island for a whole year. Promoted to Major-General, Gordon was sent to the Cape to 'sort out' Basutoland. By this
time he was pretty much the super-envoy, sent wherever there was a problem with the indigenous people (problem being defined by the colonial power, of course). Returning to London in the summer of 1882 he found a lull in the native insurrections so he took a sabbatical of a year to travel to Palestine,
the Holy Land at the 'center of the world'.