MICHAEL FARADAY. 
201 
long-desired improvement in pharmaceutical education, and give to all engaged 
in pharmacy a recognized position in society as educated men, and meet with 
the support of our own Members and Associates. The Apothecaries Act of 
1815 did not make the men then in practice L. S. A. ; and in reply it may be 
said that we do not now make all chemists “ Pharmaceutical Chemistsyet we 
might just as well do so, as u Member of the Pharmaceutical Society ” is the 
more generally known and best understood. 
The medicines now ordered by medical men are very different to those of 
even thirty years ago, and much more potent, requiring more skill and chemical 
knowledge in their preparation. Such being the case, it becomes an imperative 
duty on our part to send out men fully competent for the work they under¬ 
take. In my opinion nothing less than the Major will qualify them for their 
responsible duties, and be a sufficient guarantee to the medical profession and 
the public. 
Yours most respectfully, 
A Country Member. 
©tutuarg. 
MICHAEL FARADAY. 
The great and distinguished man whose death we briefly recorded last 
month, owed his exalted position as a man of science wholly to the innate 
force of his natural genius. Born of humble parentage, with slender means 
for the acquirement of even the most rudimentary school knowledge, he was 
removed, at the age of thirteen, from the day-school at which he had received 
his early instruction, to be apprenticed to a business, that of a bookbinder, by 
which it was proposed that he should earn his living. 
Faraday’s father, a Yorkshireman by birth, had settled in London as a 
working blacksmith. It w r as here, in the parish of Newington Butts, that the 
young philosopher was born, on the 22nd of September, 1791. In 1804 he 
was apprenticed to Mr. Riebau, a bookbinder, in Blandford Street, Manchester 
Square, where he remained until the early part of 1813. These eight or nine 
years, during which the accumulated knowledge of ages was passing through 
his hands, and some of which was afterwards found at his fingers’ ends, 
afforded opportunities for the development of his true character. He soon 
became not merely a bookbinder, but also a book-reader, and he was not even 
satisfied with the mere perusal of the records of other men’s work. Referring 
to this period, he has said of himself, “When I was a bookseller’s apprentice, 
I was very fond of experiments and very averse to trade.” A member of the 
Royal Institution, Mr. Dance, of Manchester Street, who was a frequenter of 
the bookbinder’s establishment, observing Faraday's predilection for chemical 
and electrical experiments, gave him some tickets of admission to the lectures 
of Sir Humphry Davy. This was in 1812, and the following year Faraday 
relinquished his previous occupation and became Sir Humphry’s assistant. 
As a mere assistant his early training had probably fitted him well for such a 
position. The son of an artificer, and trained for many years to the expert use 
of hio fingers, while, at the’same time, his active mind had been acquiring a 
store of knowledge from the books by which he was surrounded, and his keen 
eye had been seeking to explore the mysteries of nature in a comparatively 
new department of science, the wonders of which were then beginning to be 
revealed,—he soon became the very type of an experimental manipulator. 
In the ‘ Journal of Science and the Arts,’ which was commenced, as a 
quarterly journal, in 1816, and edited at the Royal Institution, w r e find many 
short communications by Mr. Faraday, while he occupied the position of 
