SKETCH OF DR. J. LAWRENCE SMITH. 233 



SKETCH OF DR. J. LAWRENCE SMITH. 



WE give, this month, an excellent portrait of one of the most 

 active and accomplished of our American scientists, one who 

 has not only extended the boundaries of knowledge by his researches 

 in the various fields of investigation to which he has devoted himself, 

 but who has been a missionary of science to one of the old Oriental 

 countries, and labored successfully to diffuse its benign influences 

 among a semi-barbai-ous people. 



J. Lawrence Smith was born December 16, 1818, near Charles- 

 ton, South Carolina. His father, Benjamin Smith, was a Virginian, 

 who had removed to South Carolina. The subject of this brief me- 

 moir received a classical education in the Charleston College, after 

 which he was sent to the University of Virginia. At this institution 

 he enjoyed facilities for the indulgence of his taste in the acquisition 

 of knowledge in that department for which he had in early life shown 

 a decided predilection pure mathematics. In the later part of his aca- 

 demic career, he devoted himself to the higher branches of physics, 

 mixed mathematics, and chemistry, pursuing the latter somewhat in 

 the form of a recreation. 



In determining a practical pursuit in life, young Smith selected 

 civil-engineering as a profession, and, after devoting two years to the 

 study of its various branches, in connection with geology and mining 

 engineering, he was employed as one of the assistant engineers on 

 the railroad projected at that time between Charleston and Cincinnati. 

 This pursuit not proving congenial with his scientific tastes, he turned 

 to the study of medicine, the college of the city of Charleston at that 

 time possessing a corps of eminent medical teachers. After study- 

 ing medicine three years, Dr. Smith was graduated by the Medical 

 College of South Carolina, after which he went to Europe, where he 

 devoted three more years to the study of medicine. But during all 

 this time he continued his devotion to those departments which first 

 commanded his scientific affections. He studied physiology under 

 Flourens and Longet ; chemistry under Orfila, Dumas, and Liebig; 

 physics under Pouillet, Desprez, and Becquerel ; mineralogy and geol- 

 ogy under Elie de Beaumont and Dufrenoy. 



Dr. Smith returned to America in 1844, having already begun to 

 earn a reputation in original scientific researches, principally in con- 

 nection with the fatty bodies. His paper on Spermaceti, in 1 842, at 

 once stamped his character as an experimental inquirer. 



On his return to Charleston, Dr. Smith commenced the practice of 

 medicine, and there delivered a course of lectures on toxicology. But 

 the State of South Carolina, needing his services as assayer of the 

 bullion that came into commerce from the gold-fields of Georgia, 



