S32 Biographical Memoir of the late Dr Turner. 



1820, altered his determination, and resolved to visit the Conti- 

 nent ; in the first instance, I suspect, with no very precise views 

 beyond present useful occupation. Accordingly, in August of 

 that year, he resorted to Paris in company with the late Dr 

 William CuUen and myself, and remained there for nine months, 

 frequenting the hospitals, studying the French and German lan- 

 guages, and commencing also to supply the defects of his early 

 education, by cultivating physical science and modern history. 

 Still, however, chemistry formed no prominent part of his studies. 

 But it was while he resided in Paris that he determined on 

 making this branch of science his fundamental pursuit. 



It does not exactly appear what led him to make so abrupt 

 and extraordinary a change in his professional objects. There 

 are certainly few courses of preparatory training which seem 

 less fitted to secure proficiency in chemical science, or less likely 

 to instill a fondness for it, than the cultivation of pure pathology- 

 and therapeutics. Yet such had hitherto been the chief object 

 of Dr Turnery's education, and such the only branches of science 

 for which he had hitherto shown an attachment. That he 

 should all at once have resolved at the age of twenty-five on ex- 

 changing these pursuits for one, which could not be successfully 

 followed in its improved modern form without at least three 

 qualifications of which he was at the time almost utterly desti- 

 tute, namely a knowledge of mathematics, a knowledge of va- 

 rious branches of physics, and an intimate acquaintance with 

 apparatus and the art of manipulating, — does certainly seem not 

 a little singular. That he should remedy all these defects, con- 

 quer every obstacle, make himself in a few years thoroughly 

 and practically acquainted with every important department of 

 so varied a science, and acquire above all a facility and exacti- 

 tude as an experimentalist which could scarcely be surpassed, — 

 is one of the instructive events in his history over which the 

 mental philosopher may usefully ponder, and from which the 

 youthful and aspiring mind may draw most wholesome advice 

 and encouragement. 



During the period of his residence iti Paris his attention ap- 

 pears to have been keenly turned to experimental science in ge- 

 neral, in consequence of the extraordinary interest excited at 

 the time by the development of new and important fields of dis- 



