B.—CHEMISTRY. 38 
him in choosing the right materials for his experiments. He was also 
accumulating an unrivalled knowledge of chemical technique and gaining 
the confidence to which was due the boldness and directness of his experi- 
ments in the years to come. How many of you, I wonder, have read his 
Chemical Manipulation, published in 1827, in which he describes every 
kind of laboratory operation and device. The art of experimenting must 
almost necessarily be traditional, and I remember well how this was 
brought home to me by my tutor, Sir John Conroy, when he saw me 
committing one of the minor crimes of the laboratory. He looked rather 
sadly at me, and all he said was ‘ Harcourt would have told Dixon, Dixon 
would have told Baker, and Baker would have told you.’ Faraday, 
however, wanted to make chemical manipulation less of an alchemical 
secret, ‘taught only in the very depths of the laboratory to a highly 
privileged few.’ The book is one of the most personal documents in 
scientific literature as each page is a record of his own experimental 
methods, showing how every detail of each operation had been thought 
out by him and reduced to its simplest and most effective form. 
To take one example—nowhere else will you find the use of the mortar 
analysed in such a scientific manner as in Faraday’s chapter on Com- 
minution. The nature of the substance to be powdered, the material of 
the mortar, the method of holding it to secure the quickest result with the 
minimum of fatigue, are all subjected to the most searching examination, 
and every page makes one realise the concentration of effort and thought 
that underlay all Faraday’s experiments. 
There is an intensely personal quality about Faraday’s work as it was 
all done with his own hands, and even if he used the result of others he 
repeated their experiments. ‘I was never able to make a fact my own 
without seeing it. . . . If Grove, or Wheatstone, or Gassiot told mea new 
fact and wanted my opinion . . . I could never say anything until I had 
seen the fact. For the same reason, I never could work, as some professors 
do most extensively, by students or pupils. All the work had to be my 
own. Faraday, worked alone to the end of his life with no helper except the 
trusty Sergeant Anderson, who for almost forty years was his laboratory 
assistant. ‘ He and I are companions, in years, in work and in the Royal 
Institution.’ Anderson deserves a place in our chemical hagiology beside 
Berzelius’ faithful cook, Anna, whose conservatism as regards the nature 
of chlorine was even greater than her master’s. 
Throughout his life, Faraday had an intense interest in the applications 
of science to everyday problems, often making them the subjects of his 
Friday evening discourses at the Royal Institution. We are apt to forget 
that he was a skilful analyst and that for several years he made a con- 
siderable income as a consulting chemist by what he called his ‘ pro- 
fessional business,’ until in 1831 he deliberately gave up this work lest it 
should interfere with his researches. But Government Departments were 
constantly seeking his help and advice, and for thirty years he was 
Scientific Adviser to Trinity House, where he gave his time unsparingly 
to such problems as lighting and ventilation, and even to the examination 
of water supplies and of samples of oils and paints. Quite late in life he 
had not lost his cunning as an analyst. In 1845 he was reporting to 
Trinity House on the adulteration of white lead, and in 1852 he made an 
1931 D 
