CHAPTER VI 



THE CENTURY'S PROGRESS IN PHYSICS 

 THE "IMPONDERABLES" 



THERE were giants abroad in the world of science in 

 the early days of our century. Herschel, Lagrange, 

 and Laplace; Cuvier, Brongniart, and Lamarck; Hum- 

 boldt, Goethe, Priestley what need to extend the list ? 

 the names crowd upon us. But among them all there 

 was no taller intellectual figure than that of a young 

 Quaker who came to settle in London and practise the 

 profession of medicine in the year 1801. The name of 

 this young aspirant to medical honors and emoluments 

 was Thomas Young. He came fresh from professional 

 studies at Edinburgh and on the Continent, and he had 

 the theory of medicine at his tongue's end; yet his 

 medical knowledge, compared with the mental treasures 

 of his capacious intellect as a whole, was but as a drop 

 of water in the ocean. 



For it chanced that this young Quaker physician was 

 one of those prodigies who come but few times in a cen- 

 tury, and the full list of whom in the records of history 

 could be told on one's thumbs and fingers. His biogra- 

 phers tell us things about him that read like the most 

 patent fairy-tales. As a mere infant in arms he had 



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