TRAGIC END OF DR. PRICE 87 



now interfered, and the president (Sir Joseph Banks) 

 and officers insisted that, " for the honour of the 

 society," he must repeat the experiments before delegates 

 of the society, and show that his statements were truth- 

 ful and his experiments without fraud. 



Under this pressure the unhappy Dr. Price consented 

 to repeat the experiments. He undertook to prepare in 

 six weeks ten powders similar to those which he had 

 used in his public demonstration. He appears to have 

 been in a desperate state of mind, knowing that he could 

 not expect to deceive the experts of the society. He hastily 

 studied the works of some of the German alchemists as 

 a forlorn hope, trusting that he might chance upon a 

 successful method in their writings. He also prepared a 

 bottle of laurel water, a deadly poison. Three Fellows 

 of the Royal Society came on the appointed day, in 

 August, 1783, to the laboratory, near Guildford. It 

 is related (I hope it is not true) that one of them visited 

 the laboratory the day before the trial, and, having obtained 

 entrance by bribing the housekeeper in Price's absence, 

 discovered that his crucibles had false bottoms and 

 recesses in which gold or silver could be hidden before 

 the quicksilver and powder were introduced. Dr. Price 

 appears to have received his visitors, but whether he 

 commenced the test experiments in their presence or not 

 does not appear. When they were solemnly assembled 

 in the laboratory he quietly drank a tumblerful of the 

 laurel water (hydrocyanic acid), which he had prepared, 

 and fell dead before them. He left a fortune of 

 ,12,000 in the Funds. It has been discussed whether 

 Dr. Price was a madman or an impostor. Probably 

 vanity led him on to the course of deception which 

 ended in this tragic way. He could not bring himself 

 to confess failure or deception, nor to abscond. He 

 ended his trouble by suicide. He was only thirty-one 

 years of age ! Not inappropriately he has been called 

 the " Last of the Alchemists," though a long interval of 



