HENRY. 



515 



her weep at a word ; at others, imbue her with 

 courage; so that she was alternately a 'falcon- 

 hearted dove,' and a 'reed shaken with the wind.' 

 Her voice was a sad, sweet melody, her spirits re- 

 minded me of an old poet's description of the 

 orange-tree, with its 



' Golden lamps hid in a night of green." 



or of those Spanish gardens where the pomegran- 

 ate grows beside the cypress. Her gladness was 

 like a burst of sunlight ; and if in her depression 

 she resembled night, it was night wearing her stars. 

 I might describe, and describe for ever, but I 

 should never succeed in portraying Egeria ; she was 

 a muse, a grace, a variable child, a dependent 

 woman the Italy of human beings." 



HENRY, WILLIAM, M.D., F.R.S., an eminent 

 chemist, was the son of Thomas Henry, himself 

 an eminent chemist and medical practitioner in 

 Manchester. He received the early part of his 

 education chiefly in the dissenting academy estab- 

 lished in Mosley Street, Manchester, which was 

 subsequently removed to York. He afterwards 

 lived for five years in the house of the late Dr 

 Percival, of Manchester ; and he was accustomed 

 in after life to trace mainly to the example and 

 encouragement of that eminent physician and scho- 

 lar, the origin of his own literary and scientific 

 tastes. After quitting the doctor's house, he 

 studied medicine in the university of Edinburgh ; 

 subsequently to which he was engaged for several 

 years in general practice, in partnership with his 

 father. He then graduated in the same univer- 

 sity, and was for many years one of the physicians 

 of the Royal Manchester Infirmary. 



At an early period of life his taste was first di- 

 rected to the study of chemistry, by observing his 

 father and elder brother (who died young) ardently 

 engaged in such investigations; and so long ago as 

 the year 1797, a paper of his was read before the 

 royal society, and is published in their transactions. 

 His subsequent contributions to the society were 

 numerous ; and in 1809, he had the honour of being 

 admitted a fellow. He also acquired the distinc- 

 tion of having Sir Godfrey Copley's medal awarded 

 to him by the president and council, for experi- 

 mental papers published in their transactions. Of 

 the -Manchester Literary and Philosophical So- 

 ciety he was a distinguished member, and fur- 

 nished to their transactions some important papers. 



To his favourite science, chemistry, he contri- 

 buted during the course of his life many important 

 accessions, particularly distinguishing himself in 

 the difficult and delicate province of pneumatic 

 chemistry. His analyses of gaseous bodies are 

 singularly precise, and are still incorporated in the 

 manuals of the science as the results now most 

 deserving of confidence. An important law in 

 gaseous chemistry was also discovered by him ; viz., 

 that the quantity of any gas which is capable of 

 existing in a given volume of water, increases 

 directly as the density of the gas above the water. 

 As models of exact quantitative determinations in 

 gaseous analysis, may be mentioned his memoirs 

 on the gases obtained from the destructive distilla- 

 tion of coal and oil, and his ingenious and perfectly 

 successful adaptation of the spongy platina to de- 

 termine the constituents of complex gaseous mix- 

 tures not discoverable by other analytical processes. 



His "Elements of Chemistry" have passed 

 through many editions. As a writer, his style was 

 eminently precise and logical, chaste and temperate, 



receiving as much embellishment from the stores 

 of a mind richly furnished with the elegant litera- 

 ture of his country, and gifted by nature with a 

 keen sensibility to the beautiful in scenery, in poe- 

 try, and in art, as was compatible with the graver 

 topics of the exact sciences. His mind, indeed, 

 presented an unusual combination of habits of vi- 

 gorous and accurate thinking, with a correct, or 

 rather severe taste, in the expression of his own 

 thoughts, and in the estimation of the works of 

 others, and with a finely touched imagination, and 

 a warm sensibility for all that was great and noble 

 in human action, or in the creations of human 

 genius. He was particularly successful in the intel- 

 lectual portraitures he was called upon to draw 

 of his friends, or of his fellow-labourers in the 

 cause of science. 



Dr Henry did not, in his devotion to chemistry 

 and the kindred sciences, neglect the culture of 

 purely medical science. His inaugural discourse 

 on Uric Acid; his valuable Essay on Diabetes, and 

 his researches in that extensive class of diseases 

 which are recognised and treated mainly by indi- 

 cations and remedies supplied by chemical science, 

 demonstrate his zeal in the improvement of practi- 

 cal medicine. More recently, about the time when 

 the prevalence of the Asiatic cholera in this coun- 

 try excited so much uneasiness, he engaged in a 

 very important investigation on contagion ; in 

 which he proved that various contagious poisons, 

 as the vaccine lymph, and the contagious matter 

 or effluvium of scarlatina, are decomposed by a 

 temperature considerably below that of boiling 

 water. Upon these facts, sustained by cautious 

 and rigid experiments, he proposed a new and sim- 

 ple process for disinfecting clothes or merchandise. 

 His paper on this subject attracted great attention 

 abroad, and contains suggestions which there is 

 little doubt will hereafter form an element of all 

 sound quarantine laws. Still more recently he 

 drew up a very able report on the present state of 

 knowledge regarding the laws of contagion, for the 

 British Scientific Association, which was printed 

 in their transactions. 



In early youth, he sustained a severe internal in- 

 jury, the consequence of a fall, from the effects of 

 which he never whdlly recovered. He was, indeed, 

 almost at all times, a valetudinarian ; and it was 

 to this cause that he was accustomed to attribute 

 the general delicacy of his frame, and the irrita- 

 bility and exciteableness of his temperament. 

 During the last few weeks of his life, he laboured 

 under considerable depression of spirits, and great 

 irritability, which was increased by the severe ill- 

 ness of his daughter, the wife of Mr Greg, of 

 Bury. His manner towards his domestics became 

 altered, and he had assumed a reserved tone of con- 

 versation. His indisposition seems to have been 

 augmented by the excitement consequent upon his 

 attendance at the meeting of the British Scientific 

 Association at Bristol, from which he returned 

 home with a considerable aggravation of the symp- 

 toms he had previously exhibited ; and on the 

 morning of Friday the 2d of September, 1836, he 

 discharged a loaded pistol into his mouth : the ball 

 lodged in his brain, and of course death instantan- 

 eously followed. At the time of his death he was 

 aged 61. Dr Henry's character was of the most 

 amiable and attractive description. His affections 

 were ardent; his means affluent; and he was li- 

 beral in patronizing those aspirants in science who 

 attracted his attention. 

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