APPOINTED PROFESSOR: STUDIES IN PHILADELPHIA. 103 



combining proportions of bodies were generally given in 

 centesimal numbers, and thus the memory was burdened, 

 and with little satisfaction. The modern analysis of organic 

 bodies was then hardly begun. Galvanism had indeed 

 awakened Europe, and progress had been made towards 

 those interesting developments which have rilled the world 

 with astonishment; but their era was several years later. 

 We may not, therefore, impute to a professor of that period 

 the deficiencies which belonged to that stage of this science. 



I had not reason to regret that I attended on the lectures 

 of Dr. Woodhouse. He supplied the first stepping-stones 

 by which I was enabled at no distant day to mount higher. 



The deficiencies of Dr. Woodhouse's courses were, in a 

 considerable degree, made up in a manner which I could 

 not have anticipated. I have already mentioned that Robert 

 Hare was a fellow-boarder and companion at Mrs. Smith's. 

 He was a genial, kind-hearted man, one year younger than 

 myself, and was already a proficient in chemistry upon the 

 scale of that period ; and being informed of my object in 

 coming to Philadelphia, he kindly entered into my views 

 and extended to me his friendship and assistance. A small 

 working laboratory was conceded to us by the indulgence 

 of our hostess, Mrs. Smith, and we made use of a spare 

 cellar-kitchen, in which we worked together in our hours 

 of leisure from other pursuits. Mr. Hare had, one year 

 before, perfected his beautiful invention of the oxy-hydro- 

 gen blow-pipe, and had presented the instrument to the 

 Chemical Society of Philadelphia. His mind was much 

 occupied with the subject, and he enlisted me into his 

 service. We worked much in making oxygen and hydrogen 

 gases, burning them at a common orifice to produce the 

 intense heat of the instrument. Hare was desirous of 

 making it still more intense by deriving a pure oxygen 

 from chlorate of potassa, then called oxy-muriate of potassa. 

 Chemists were then ignorant of the fact that, by mixing a 

 little oxide of manganese with the chlorate, the oxygen can 



