357 



The President then called upon Mr. Christie to read the following 

 obituary notices of some of the deceased Members. 



Jonathan Pereira, M.D,, was born on the 22nd of May, 1804, 

 in the parish of Shoreditch, London. At ten years of age he was 

 placed in a Classical Academy in Queen Street, Finsbury, where he 

 remained about four years, and distinguished himself as one of the 

 most promising pupils in the school. 



Dr. Pereira's education was now directed to the pursuit of surgery, 

 but his appointment to the office of Resident Medical Offic'er of the 

 General Dispensary in Aldersgate Street in 1823, led to his devoting 

 himself more especially to the practice of medicine. 



In 1826 he succeeded Dr. Clutterbuck as lecturer on Chemistry 

 at the Aldersgate Street Dispensary, His first lecture was devoted 

 to an account of the rise and progress of Chemistry from the earliest 

 date to which the history of the science could be traced, and com- 

 prised a notice of the latest discoveries. The theatre was crowded to 

 excess, and the lecture created no little sensation from the profusion 

 of illustrations, the amount of information, and the style of his 

 delivery. Among other illustrations he exhibited bromine, which 

 had recently been discovered by Balard, of Montpellier. 



His cultivation of chemistry at that time in connexion with medi- 

 cine, naturally directed his attention to the subject of the substances 

 used as medicinal agents, and in 1824 we find him publishing a 

 translation of the * London Pharmacopoeia.' This w^as followed by 

 ' A Manual for the Use of Students,' ' A general Table of Atomic 

 Numbers, with an Introduction to the Atomic Theory,' and other 

 works for the use of those who were pursuing their medical studies 

 with a view to passing the usual examinations. He afterwards 

 published numerous papers on the adulteration and properties of 

 drugs ; and thus prepared himself for his great work — that on 

 which his reputation as a physician and man of science will princi- 

 pally rest, — his 'Elements of Materia Medica.' The outlines of 

 this work first appeared as a course of lectures in the London Medi- 

 cal Gazette. This work contained by far the most complete and 

 accurate account of substances used in medicine that had ever been 

 published. Not only were sources of medicine and their commercial 

 history fully treated therein, but the author entered with great caution 

 and skill into inquiries connected with the action of remedies : and 

 thus his book became at once a standard of reference for all who were 

 engaged in the business of selling drugs and chemicals, or in the 

 duty of prescribing them as medicines. The first volume and a part 

 of the second of a third edition of this work had been published at 

 the time of the author's decease. In 1843, Dr. Pereira published a 

 treatise on diet ; which at the time of its appearance was one of the 

 most philosophical works that had yet been produced on the subject 

 of the food of man, and * Lectures on Polarized Light,' the best fami- 

 liar exposition of that abstruse subject in our language. He also 

 contributed numerous articles to societies, journals, reviews, etc. 



Proceedings or the Royal Society. Vol. VI. No. 100. 26 



