834) Biographical Memoir oftlie late Dr Turner. 



Dr Turner repaired to the laboratory of Stromeyer at a very 

 early hour every morning ; laboured assiduously there the whole 

 day ; and for fully two years, except for a short period in the 

 summer of 1822, when he re-visited Bath on account of the 

 death of his surviving parent, he allowed nothing to withdraw 

 hjm from his chemical occupations. During that term there 

 were fevr subjects in the inorganic department of chemistry 

 which he had not studied experimentally ; while in mineral ana- 

 lysis, the favourite pursuit of his teacher, and one which had 

 been hitherto greatly neglected in Britain, he had attained to 

 such skill and experience, as to find on returning home scarcely 

 any equal in this respect among his countrymen. 



Dr Turner's means did not place him above the necessity of 

 professional exertion ; and his studies in Gottingen were there- 

 fore conducted with a view to his embracing the profession of a 

 lecturer on chemistry. We have the gratification of reflecting, 

 that he, a stranger, and with the whole united kingdom equally 

 open for his choice, fixed upon Edinburgh as the most promis- 

 ing theatre of professional ambition. This resolution was not a 

 little creditable to its inhabitants ; for his reasons simply were, 

 that chemistry was nowhere in Britain so generally cultivated, 

 and that nowhere else did there appear to him to be so fair and 

 impartial a field for honourable competition. Such I know were 

 his views ; for his plans in regard to this, the most important 

 step in his life, were communicated to me while ho was in Got- 

 tingen, and I have the pleasure of thinking that my exhorta- 

 tions on the subject determined his choice. In London, the 

 natural and first object of his thoughts, chemistry was at that 

 time far from being so properly appreciated as a branch of me- 

 dical science or a popular pursuit as in this city. The courses 

 of lectures delivered upon it in the metropolis were ineffectively 

 brief. The subject was not comprised in the regulations of what 

 was then the most important of the corporate bodies who directed 

 medical education. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that 

 the London students, almost to a man, looked on chemistry as 

 a very subordinate, and many indeed even as a useless, branch 

 of medical study. Only two years earlier, when I was myself 

 a pupil of one of the most populous schools in London, that of 



