166 Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



went to Geneva at the age of eighteen, and resided there for the greater 

 part of his life. He eventually became Professor of Physics in the 

 Academy of Sciences of Geneva, and Councillor of State, but in 1870 

 he again took up residence in London. He published many papers, 

 chiefly of chemico-physical and meteorological character, and was also 

 a Fellow of this Society. He served for several years on the Council 

 of University College, London, an institution in which his son, the 

 subject of this memoir, also took a keen interest, and in which in the 

 later years of his life he carried out most of his researches. 



With such an ancestry and home surroundings, it is not surprising 

 to find that the bent of William Marcet's mind was in the direction of 

 the elucidation of problems of a chemico-medical and physico-medical 

 mature ; thus we find him at different times of his life investigating 

 ,such chemical problems as the composition of foods and their changes 

 in digestion, the measurement of the amount of heat produced by the 

 human body under varying conditions of rest and activity, and 

 making observations on climatology, the value of which was testified 

 by the election of their author to the distinguished position of 

 President of the Royal Meteorological Society. 



William Marcet's boyhood was spent at Geneva, where he was 

 .a pupil of M. Toepffer, who appears to have been attracted by the 

 vivacity and originality of his young pupil, whom he has put into 

 his " Voyages en Zigzag" under the appellation of Sorbiere. After 

 studying for some years in the Academy of Sciences of Geneva, 

 Marcet went to Edinburgh at the age of eighteen to study medicine. 

 He took his degree there in 1850, and shortly after proceeded to Paris, 

 further to work at chemistry under Yerdeil, with whom he undertook 

 a series of investigations upon the composition of the blood in man 

 and mammals, and upon the chemical principles of the food and their 

 changes in digestion, the joint articles being communicated to the 

 >Societe de Biologic. Returning to London in 1853 where he intended 

 to settle down to the practice of medicine, and where he was before 

 long appointed Assistant-Physician to the Westminster Hospital he 

 continued to pursue these researches upon food and digestion, and 

 in 1856 published a work of considerable importance " On the Com- 

 position of Food and how it is Adulterated ; with practical directions 

 for its Analysis." In the following year, at the comparatively early 

 age of 29, he was elected a Fellow of this Society, to which, as we 

 have seen, both his father and grandfather also belonged. Soon after 

 this he was appointed Lecturer on Chemistry and Texicology at the 

 Westminster Hospital Medical School. In 1863 he resigned his 

 appointments at the Westminster Hospital, but a few years later, in 

 1867, was made Assistant Physician to the Brompton Hospital for 

 Consumption, being at this time especially interested in the study of 



