SKETCH OF DR. THOMAS YOUJSTG. 363 



" 7. All the phenomena of the colors of thin plates, which are in reality un- 

 intelligible on the common hypothesis, admit of a very complete and simple ex- 

 planation by this supposition. The analogy which is here superficially indicated 

 will probably soon be made public more in detail ; and will also he extended to 

 the colors of thick plates, and to the fringes jiroduced by inflection, aflording 

 from Newton's own elaborate experiments a most convincing argument in favor 

 of this system.'" 



Regarding medicine as an inductive branch of philosophy, Dr. 

 Young drew up an "Introduction to Medical Literature, including a 

 Practical System of Xosology," which Dr. Peacock, his latest biogra- 

 pher, says, bears much the same relation to the medical sciences that 

 his lectures on natural philosophy bear to the mathematical and 

 physical sciences. It appeared in 1813, and in an Appendix he gave 

 a sketch of animal chemistry, translated from the Swedish of Berzelius 

 by the aid of a grammar and dictionary, without any previous ac- 

 quaintance with the language. 



In the field of philological exploration. Dr. Young exhibited tal- 

 ents of a very high order. He was especially skillful in deciphering 

 manuscripts and inscriptions w'hich had bafHed the ingenuity of his 

 predecessors. " The attention of Dr. Young was first devoted to 

 hieroglyphic research by a papyrus in Egjq^tian characters, submitted 

 to him in the spring of 1814, by Sir W. Rouse Boughton, found in a 

 mummy-case in a catacomb near Thebes. The papyrus was written 

 in cursive Egyptian characters, and Dr. Young's notice of it was ap- 

 pended to a communication, by its discoverer, to the Antiquarian 

 Society. Between May and November of the same year, he analyzed 

 the three inscriptions of the well-known Rosetta Stone, and gave a 

 conjectural translation of the second of the three, which was added 

 to the notice above mentioned." Champollion, the great French anti- 

 quarian, was the rival of Young in the work of unraveling the old in- 

 scriptions, and a warm controversy grew out of the^r respective claims 

 which was not free from the tinge of national feeling. Both were 

 men undoubtedly of great originality, and made their discoveries in- 

 dependent of each other. " Dr. Young never failed to do justice to 

 the sagacity, the extensive learning, and the deep research of Cham- 

 pollion ; and his own merits were nobly recognized by the country- 

 men of his rival, when, in 1828, they elected him one of the eight 

 foreign associates of the Institute of France." 



About the year 1810 Dr. Young took up the subject of naval archi- 

 tecture, and contributed important improvements to the construction 

 of ships-of-war. In 1816 he was appointed secretary to a commission 

 for ascertaining the length of the second's pendulum, and drew up 

 the three reports which were made in 1819, 1820, and 1821. In 1818 

 he was appointed superintendent of the Nautical Almanac. He had, 

 some years previously to this, gone into the subject of life-assurance, 

 and worked out mathematically the formula of the value of life, and 



