: 
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NATURE 
379 
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1916. 
THE LIFE-WORK OF DR. E. 
MUSPRATT. 
My Life and Work. By Dr. E. K. Muspratt. 
Pp. xi+320. (London: John Lane, 1917.) 
Price 7s. 6d. net. : 
HE author of this autobiography comes of a 
family which has exercised a marked in- 
fluence on the industrial development of South 
Lancashire. Its members, moreover, have played 
no ineonsiderable part in the social and intellectual 
life of Liverpool. To his father, James Muspratt, 
belongs the credit of founding the alkali manufac- 
ture in Lancashire. His life is one of the romances 
of chemical industry. Born in Dublin, of English 
parents, in 1793, he was apprenticed, when four- 
teen years of age, to a wholesale druggist in that 
city, but losing both his parents when he was 
scarcely eighteen, he broke his indentures and 
embarked for Spain in the hope of obtaining a 
Kk. 
cornetey in a cavalry regiment in Wellington’s. 
army. A youth of fine physique and of a splendid 
constitution, Muspratt had all the physical quali- 
fications for a successful soldier, but unfortunately 
he had no social influence, and in those days com- 
missions in mounted regiments were reserved for 
those favoured*in high quarters. Still, he had 
some experience of the Peninsular campaign, was 
stricken with fever in Madrid, and was in Hill’s 
retreat down the valley of the Tagus. He then 
joined the Navy, and as a midshipman in the 
Impetueux took part in the blockade of Brest 
and in one or two frigate actions. He soon 
threw up this career, and making his way back 
to Dublin, started chemical manufacturing with 
the aid of a small inheritance which had been 
saved from the results of a Chancery action. 
On the abolition of the’ salt duty in 1823, 
Muspratt saw his opportunity, and, moving to 
Liverpool, established, in the face of difficulties 
that would have crushed a weaker man, the manu- 
facture of soda by the Leblanc process. He 
rapidly acquired wealth, and eventually built Sea- 
forth Hall, a fine large house in the classical style, 
and a prominent landmark in what was then a 
remote suburban district among the sandhills at 
the mouth of the Mersey. He died at the age of 
ninety-three, after a vigorous, active life, full of 
excitement and incident. He had a large family, 
one of whom, Dr. Sheridan Muspratt, the well- 
known editor of the “Dictionary of Chemistry,” 
a work which had a considerable vogue in its 
day, founded the Liverpool College of Chemistry. 
The author of this memoir was the youngest 
son of the father of the alkali trade. He was 
born in 1833—the same year as his friend, the late 
Sir Henry Roscoe, with whom he went to school 
at Gateacre. When young Muspratt was about 
four years old the British Association happened 
to meet at Liverpool, an event which was destined 
to have a considerable influence on his after- 
life. Among the distinguished foreign visitors 
NO. 2461, VOL. 98] 
was Justus Liebig, the chemist, then a compara- 
tively young man of thirty-five, but already almost 
at the summit of his fame. With him the elder 
Muspratt, now an acknowledged leader of 
English chemical technology, and a man of social 
influence in Liverpool, contracted a firm friendship 
which eventually included both their families. 
After a good school training on Pestalozzi's 
system young Muspratt was sent in his seven- 
teenth year to Giessen to study chemistry under 
Liebig and Will, and physics and mathematics 
under Buff and Zamminer. ‘‘ When I first arrived 
at Giessen,”’ writes our author, “ Liebig, who was 
only about fifty or fifty-one years of age, appeared 
an old and broken-down man. When he entered 
the lecture-room he could hardly walk firmly, but 
glided in and appeared exhausted with the effort. 
In a few minutes all was changed, when he be- 
came inspired by the subject of his lecture.” 
Liebig, shortly afterwards, was invited to a far 
less strenuous position in the University of Munich, 
a circumstance which, no doubt, prolonged his 
life, and Dr. Muspratt elected to follow him, not 
so much with the view of studying chemistry 
as of studying medicine, to which at that time 
he had some inclination. He and the other 
members of his family who from time to time 
joined him at Munich were now on terms of close 
intimacy with the Liebigs, and were, in fact, part 
of their social and home life. This section of Dr. 
Muspratt’s reminiscences constitutes, indeed, one 
of the most interesting features of his book, and 
in a few graphic touches, done with the artless- 
ness which conceals art, we gain a vivid impres- 
sion of German university life and of the con- 
dition of German society in the early fifties of 
last century. It is not without its lights and 
shades. Nothing could: be more striking, for 
example, than the contrast between the drab and 
humdrum life at Giessen, its atmosphere of 
strenuous study, its simple, homely pleasures, and 
the social whirl and political excitements of the 
gay and light-hearted Bavarian capital. We 
trace the influences already at work- of which 
we see the outcome in this later time. The 
“foreigners,” as the North Germans, who had 
been invited to Munich by Maximilian, at the 
instigation of his Prussian tutor, von Dénniges, 
were called, were never really popular in the city 
of their adoption. Their influence from the out- 
set was, and with good cause, dreaded by the 
Ultramontanes, and there can be little doubt that 
it was used to promote Bavaria’s adhesion to the 
North German Confederation, and, ultimately, to 
bring about its absorption into the German 
Empire. The potential political value of pro- 
fessors, of which we hear so much to-day, is no 
new, thing in Germany. 
The space at our disposal, unfortunately, does 
not permit us to follow Dr. Muspratt at greater 
length through the many episodes of his long and 
varied career. But before we leave his account 
of his Munich life it may be of interest to note 
it was the circumstance that his sister, Miss Emma 
Muspratt, afterwards Mrs. Harley, was attacked 
s 
