42 
different talents, he acquired additional honour. Long in the 
commission of the peace, an acting magistrate for the county of 
Cumberland, he discharged the duties of that important station 
not less with credit to himself than advantage to the community.” 
In the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” Vol. 70, part 1, pp. 386-7, 
there is an obituary notice from which the following extract is 
taken :— 
1800, Jan. 7th. At his seat at Ormathwaite, near Keswick, Co. Cumber- 
land, in his eighty-ninth year, the great and good William Brownrigg, M.D., 
F.R.S. To this place he had retired about twenty years since, withdrawing 
himself as much from the practice of phisick as his numerous connexions, his 
high character, and his friendliness of disposition would permit him; and 
purposing to divide his time and his taste between the romantic scenery of this 
delicious spot, and the profounder researches into that department of Natural 
Philosophy, which was already considered as his peculium. As it was Mr. B’s 
lot to choose his own profession, so he began his career under the most 
auspicious omens. The medical science of the University of Leyden was at 
that day shining in its highest noon. Albinus in Anatomy, Euler in Mathe- 
maticks, and other great names in the collateral sciences, thronged round the 
chair of Medicine and Chemistry, so ably occupied by the ingenious and 
indefatigable, the accomplished and instructive Beorhaave. Having made at 
Leyden a long and happy residence, and taken an honourable degree, he 
returned to his native country, and, in Whitehaven, married a lady of singular 
good sense, much information, and great vivacity; of a disposition most 
hospitable, manners most polite, of affections most warm and liberal, and 
possessing an address so versatile and superior as never failed to charm in 
whatever circle it was exerted. * 
He was author of an inaugural treatise, ‘De Praxi medica incunda,” 1737. 
Of a treatise ‘On the Art of Making Common Salt,’ printed at London in 1748, 
which procured for him the additional F.R.S.; a book now long out of print, 
but not of recollection, since it is by foreign chemists as well as by natives, 
by M. Chaptal as well as by our own Dr. Watson, cried up for its profound 
variety of excellence, and lamented for its scarceness. He also published ‘An 
Enquiry concerning the Mineral Elastic Spirit contained in the Water of Spa, 
in Germany,’ Philos. Trans. Vol. 55; and lastly, a treatise published in 1771, 
in octavo, ‘On the Means of Preventing the Communication of Pestilential 
Contagion.’ All which Dr. B. has effected by producing the various combina: 
tions of gases and vapours which constitute atmospheric air, and separating into 
many forms this long supposed one and indivisible, whilst he solidified its fluid 
* This lady was Mary, daughter of John Spedding, Esq., whom he married Aug. 3rd, 1741 
