92 Memorial of George Brozvii Goode. 



The National Institution began its career at a time when the country 

 was chafing under the irritation of the dela5^s of Congress in organizing 



was engaged in delivering courses of chemical lectures in Philadelphia, presumably 

 for the benefit of medical students. 



He appears to have enlisted as a volunteer in a Pennsylvania regiment at the 

 beginning of the war of 1812, and at its close, on the 12th of August, 1S14, was 

 appointed assistant apothecary-general in the Regular Army of the United States, 

 which position he held until 1820, when he was appointed post surgeon and chief 

 medical officer of the Military Academy at West Point. In November, 1821, he was 

 made assistant surgeon and acting professor of chemistry and mineralogy in the 

 Academy, in which capacity he served until his death, which occurred on December 

 15, 1823. 



His most important work, A S}'stem of Pyrotechny ( 8vo. , Philadelphia, 1825, i-xliv, 

 1-612), was joublished in Philadelphia after his death by his widow, aided by a sub- 

 scription from the cadets of the Military Academy. 



Another work, entitled The Philosophy of Experimental Chemistry, in two vol- 

 umes (Philadelphia, 1813, i2mo., (i) pp. xii, 1-356 (2) i-viii, 1-339), appears to have 

 been the earliest general work or text-book on chemistry written in America, 

 although Benjamin Rush had printed a S341abus of his lectures which gave him the 

 title to be considered "the father of chemistry in America," and James Cutbusli 

 himself had, as early as 1807 or 1808, prepared an Epitome of Chemistry, for the use 

 of St. John's College, in which he was a teacher, of the publication of which, how- 

 ever, I have found no record. 



In 1812 he delivered an Oration on Education (Philadelphia, 1812, Svo., pp. 1-50), 

 before the Society for the Promotion of a Rational Sj^stem of Education, of which 

 he was vice-president -an enlightened and eloquent address full of historical infor- 

 mation. He also published in 1808 a book called The Useful Cabinet, a treatise 

 " On hydrostatics and specific gravity," and also certain papers in the American 

 Journal of Science. 



Besides holding a corresponding membership in the Columbian Institute at Wash- 

 ington, which was founded by his brother, he was president of the Columbian Chem- 

 ical Society and member of the Ivinnsean and Agricultural societies of Philadelphia. 

 Rafinesque, enumerating in 1817 those of the American scientific men whom he con- 

 sidered entitled to rank as philosophers, mentions the name of Cutbush along with 

 his own and those of Jefferson, Clinton, Vaughan, Bentley, Winthrop, Patterson, 

 Williamson, Griscom, Wood, Dupont, Woodward, Rush, Mitchill, Ramsay, and 

 Priestley. 



Edward Cutbush, after his graduation at the Philadelphia Medical School in 1794, 

 became attached to the militia of Penns5dvania, first as hospital surgeon and subse- 

 quently as surgeon-general. On the 24th of June, 1799, he was appointed a surgeon 

 in the United States Navy, in which capacity he served until June 20, 1829, when he 

 resigned. In the j^ears 1816 and 1817 he appears to have been stationed in Wash- 

 ington, and at this time participated in the foundation of the Columbian Institute 

 for the Promotion of Science. I can find no record of his whereabouts after 1829 

 mitil 1835, when he was a resident of Geneva, New York, and participated in the 

 establishment of the medical institute of Geneva College, in which he became pro- 

 fessor of chemistry. On the occasion of its formal opening, on February 10, 1835, 

 he delivered a discourse ' ' On the history and methods of medical instruction ' ' 

 (Geneva, 1835, 8vo., pp. 1-24). In 1842 he appears to have been still at Geneva, and 

 at this time was probably a man seventy or eighty years of age. His Washington 

 address and his Geneva address appear to be his only literary remains, with the 

 exception of a book which was published in Philadelphia in 1808 entitled Observa- 

 tions on the Means of Preserving the Health of Soldiers and Sailors, etc. (Phila- 

 delphia, 1808, Svo., pp. i-xvi, 1-316, 1-14). 



