Royal Society. 197 



among the zealous cultivators of Animal Chemistry, Physiology, 

 and other branches of Medical Science. His father had been esta- 

 blished as physician at Liverpool, and from his great talents would 

 probably have risen to considerable eminence, had not these brilliant 

 prospects been doomed to sudden extinction by an untimely death, 

 before he had attained the age of thirty. He left an only child, the 

 subject of the present notice, who was born in 1774, the year pre- 

 ceding that fatal event, and whose early education was conducted 

 at the New College at Hackney, at the time when Dr. Priestley was 

 delivering lectures on chemistry. Having imbibed, under such able 

 tuition, an ardent love of science, young Bostock was led to make 

 choice of medicine as his profession. He studied at Edinburgh, 

 where he graduated in the year 1798, and soon afterwards com- 

 menced practice in his native town. The activity of his mind was 

 there displayed, not only in numerous contributions to most of the 

 medical and scientific journals, but also in the prominent part which 

 he took in planning and establishing various charitable, scientific 

 and literary institutions, and more particularly the Fever Hospital, 

 and the Botanic Garden ; and also the Philosophical and Literary 

 Institution of Liverpool, where, in the capacity of Professor of Phy- 

 siology, he delivered the first course of lectures there given. 



Having secured a competent fortune. Dr. Bostock determined, in 

 1817, to relinquish his profession and fix his residence in London, 

 where he could possess more extensive means of prosecuting his 

 favourite studies, and enjoy a more enlarged society of scientific 

 friends. He soon became an associate of most of the scientific so- 

 cieties of the metropolis, and an active labourer in their management. 

 In 1818, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society; was several 

 times placed on its Councils, and in 1832, filled the office of Vice- 

 President. He was for some years Secretary of the Geological So- 

 ciety, and in 1826 was appointed its President. He long held the 

 office of Treasurer of the INIedical and Chinirgical Society, and took 

 an active share in the management of the Fever Hospital, not only 

 as a member of its Committee, but also as one of its House Direct- 

 ors. He was also, during a long period, one of the lecturers on 

 Chemistry at the Medical School of Guy's Hospital, being appointed 

 to that office on the death of his friend Dr. Marcet, in 1822. 



Amidst these multiplied public avocations, he found leisure for the 

 accomplishment of a great variety of literary and scientific labours, 

 the aggregate amount of which would appear astonishing to any 

 one wiio was not acquainted with his methodical habits, his perse- 

 vering industry, and his advantageous employment of every portion 

 of his time. His contributions to medical and scientific journals, 

 transactions of societies and cyclopaedias, amount to no less than 

 sixty-nine; of which twenty are contained in Nicholson's Journal 

 and Annals of Philosophy, eighteen in the Medico-Chirurgical Trans- 

 actions, and twelve in the Cyclopaedias of Practical Medicine, and of 

 Anatomy and Physiology. Only one pajjcr by him ajipears in the 

 Philosophical Transactions (in 1829), namely, that " On the spon- 

 taneous purification of the Thames Water," recording the observa- 



