APPENDIX. 



JOSEPH BLACK, M.D. 



PROFESSOR OF THE UNIVERSITIES OF EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 



Born 1728* Died November 26, 1799. 



Dr. Joseph Black was born at Bourdeaux, where his father, a 

 native of Belfast but of Scotch descent, was settled as a wine 

 merchant ; and being a man of engaging disposition and extensive 

 information was much esteemed by his friends, among whom he 

 reckoned Montesquieu, at that time one of the presidents of the 

 court of justice in the province where Mr. Black resided. At the 

 age of twelve Joseph Black was sent to a school at Belfast, where 

 he remained for some years. In 1746 he was removed to the College 

 at Glasgow and ever afterwards lived in Scotland, which was, pro- 

 perly speaking, his native country. While at the College of Glasgow 

 he studied under the celebrated Dr. Cullen, then professor of ana- 

 tomy and lecturer on chemistry, and in the year 1751 removed to 

 Edinburgh to complete the course of his medical studies. In the 

 following year Black made his first great discovery of the cause of 

 the causticity of lime, a property till then supposed to be due to 

 the absorption by the lime of some igneous agency. He placed this 

 question on a scientific basis by ascertaining the chemical difference 

 between quick -lime and other forms of the carbonate, and first 

 announced his discovery in a Latin Thesis upon the occasion of his 

 taking his degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1754. It was not, how- 

 ever, given in its fullest details until the year afterwards, when he 

 published his celebrated work entitled, ' Experiments on Magnesia, 

 Quick -lime, and other alkaline substances;' a work which Lord 

 Brougham describes as being incontestably the most beautiful 

 example of strict inductive investigation since the ' Optics' of Sir 

 Isaac Newton. In 1754, as has been mentioned, Black took his 

 medical degree at Edinburgh ; in 1756 he was appointed to succeed 

 Dr. Cullen as professor of anatomy and lecturer on chemistry in the 

 University of Glasgow. Soon after, however, he exchanged this for 

 the professorship of medicine at the same university, as being more 

 congenial to his tastes. Dr. Black continued at the University of 



* Lord Brougham gives the date of Dr. Black's birth as 1721. Lives of 

 Philosophers. Third Edition, 1855. 



