EULOGY ON THOMAS YOUNG. I'd I 



ually result from the action of the medicine, even the most clearly 

 called for, presented themselves in a mass to his mind ', seemed to coun- 

 terbalance the tavorable chances which might attend the use of them ; 

 and thus threw him into a state of indecision, no doubt very natural, 

 yet on which the public will always put an unfavorable construction. 

 The same timidity showed itself in all the works of Young which treated 

 on medical subjects.* This man, so eminently remarkable for the bold- 

 ness of his scientific conceptions, gives here no more than a bare enumera- 

 tion of facts. He seems hardly convinced of the soundness of his 

 thesis, either when he attacks the celebrated Dr. Eadclift'e, whose whole 

 secret in the most brilliant and successful practice was, as he has him- 

 self said, to employ remedies exactly the reverse of the usual way ; or 

 when he combats Dr. Brown, who found himself, as he says, in the dis- 

 agreeable necessity of recognizing, and that in accordance with the offi- 

 cial documents of an hospital, attended by the most eminent physicians, 

 that, on the average, fevers left to their natural course are neither more 

 severe nor of longer duration than those treated by the best methods. 



In 1818 Young, having been named secretary to the Board of Longi- 

 tude, abandoned entirely the practice of medicine to give himself up to 

 the close superintendence of the celebrated periodical work known 

 under the name of the Nautical Almanac. From this date the Journal 

 of the Royal Institution gave every quarter his numerous dissertations 

 on the most important problems of navigation and astronomy. A vol- 

 ume entitled " Illustration of the Mecanique Celeste of Laplace," a scien- 

 tific discussion on the tides, amply attested that Young did not consider 

 the employment he had accepted as a sinecure. This employment be- 

 came, nevertheless, to him a source of unceasing disgiist. The Xautical 

 Almanac had always been, from its commencement, a work exclusively 

 destined to the service of the navy. Some persons demanded that it 

 ought to be made, besides, a complete astronomical ephemeris. The 

 Board of Longitude, whether right or wrong, not having shown itself a 

 strong partisan of the projected change, found itself suddenly the object 

 of the most violent attacks. The journals of every party, whig or tory, 

 took i)art in the conflict. 



We were no longer to view it as a union of such men as Davy, Wol- 

 laston. Young, Herschel, Kater, and Pond, but an assembly of individ- 

 uals (I quote the words) "who obeyed a Boeotian influence." The 

 Nautical Almanac, hitherto so renowned, was now declared to have be- 

 come an object of shame to the English nation. If an error of the 

 press was discovered, such as there must be in any collection of figures 

 at all voluminous, the British navy, from the smallest bark up to the 

 colossal three-decker, misled by an incorrect figiu-e, would all together 

 be engulfed in the ocean, &c. 



It has been pretended that the principal promoter of these foolish 

 exaggerations did not perceive such foolish errors in the Nautical 

 Almanac until after he had unsuccessfully attempted himself to obtain 

 a place in the Board of Longitude. I know not whether the fact was 

 so. In any case, I would not make myself the echo of the malicious 

 commentaries to which it gave rise. I ought not to forget, in fact, that 



*This timidity in medical speculation is entirely borne out by the tenor of Young's 

 intellectual character, as exhibited in such forcible lineaments in the portrait iiresent^'d 

 to us l)y Dr. Peacock. His mind was essentially cast in a matter-of-fact, positive, demon- 

 strative nu)ld ; hence all subjects of abstract or doubtful inquiry, in which probabilitiep 

 alone could be estimated, or when the conclusions were to be the result of moral dis- 

 crimination, were utterly uusuited to him. His medical character has bc^n viewed, 

 however, in a much higher light by Dr. Peacock, who has sought to combat the un- 

 favorable impressions here advanced. (See esj)ecially pp. 213, 222.) — Translaxor, 



