ADASt Pi9oa4rm" }      Teachers  of  Chemistry  in  America.  361 
such  eminent  medical  practitioners  as  Dr.  Benjamin  Rush,  John  S. 
Dorsey  and  John  C.  Otto.  At  least  one  of  the  then  existing  apoth- 
ecaries, John  Y.  Bryant,  was  an  active  member  of  the  society.  Mr. 
Bryant  served  the  society  as  treasurer  and  also  as  a  member  of 
the  Analyzing  Committee.  Prominent  among  the  younger  mem- 
bers of  this  society  was  Robert  Hare,  the  inventor  of  the  oxy- 
hydrogen  blowpipe,  and  at  a  later  period  professor  of  chemistry 
in  the  University  of  Pennsylvania.  Silliman,  too,  no  doubt,  attended 
the  meetings  of  this  society ;  at  all  events,  he  became  intimately 
attached  to  and  a  warm  admirer  of  Hare,  the  two  working  together 
in  a  private  laboratory  that  they  had  contrived  to  fit  up  in  the  base^ 
ment  of  their  boarding-house. 
There  are,  however,  several  teachers  of  the  eighteenth  century 
that  should  still  be  mentioned.  At  William  and  Mary,  in  Virginia, 
the  Rev.  James  Madison,  later  Bishop  of  Virginia,  was  elected  pro- 
fessor of  natural  philosophy  in  1774.  Despite  his  numerous  other 
duties,  Bishop  Madison  continued  to  teach  until  his  death  in  1 81 2, 
when  he  was  succeeded  by  Dr.  John  MacLean,  the  one-time  professor 
of  chemistry  in  Nassau  Hall,  Princeton. 
At  Yale  Prof.  Josiah  Meigs  delivered  lectures  on  natural  philoso- 
phy from  1794  to  1801.  According  to  one  of  his  pupils,  Benjamin 
Silliman,  "  he  was  a  gentleman  of  great  intelligence  and  was  well 
read  in  the  chemical  writers  of  the  French  school." 
The  first  teacher  of  chemistry  at  Harvard,  apart  from  natural  phi- 
losophy, was  Dr.  Aaron  Dexter,  who,  while  not  a  brilliant  teacher, 
or,  according  to  an  anecdote  told  by  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  not  a 
very  successful  experimenter,  was,  nevertheless,  instrumental  in 
securing  for  Harvard  University  at  least  some  of  the  material 
with  which  to  lay  the  firm  foundation  on  which  the  teaching 
of  the  science  in  that  institution  now  rests.  It  was  Dr.  Aaron 
Dexter  who,  in  1 782,  induced  Mr.  William  Erving,  a  wealthy 
citizen  of  Boston,  to  endow  a  chair  of  Chemistry  and  Materia 
Medica  in  the  newly  organized  medical  school  of  the  University  of 
Cambridge.  To  this  chair  Dr.  Dexter  was  elected  in  1783  and  con- 
tinued to  teach  until  1806,  when  he  was  succeeded  by  Dr.  John 
Gorham,  a  brilliant  lecturer  and  a  very  able  teacher,  who  had  been 
a  fellow-student  with  Silliman,  in  Edinburgh,  under  Dr.  Thomas 
Hope,  then  professor  of  chemistry. 
Another  chair  of  chemistry,  founded  before  the  beginning  of  the 
