OBITUARY. 
189 
DEATH OF BERZELIUS. 
This distinguished chemist, the father of analytical chemis- 
try, expired on the 7th of Aug., 1848, at Stockholm. Baron 
Berzelius was born on the 20th of Aug., 1779, in Ostergoth- 
land, in Sweden, of a respectable family. At the age of 
seventeen he entered the University of Upsala, where he 
made a rapid progress in his studies, particularly in his fa- 
vourite science— Chemistry ; after passing the necessary ex- 
aminations, he received his diploma of Doctor in Medicine 
in 1804, and was appointed Medicine et Pharmacise Ad- 
junct us at the Collegium Medicum at Stockholm, and gave 
instruction in chemistry to young students, and on account 
of his small income, was obliged to practice occasionally as 
a physician. In 1807 he was appointed Medicinae Phar- 
macia? Professor; and in the same year he instituted, in con- 
junction with seven other eminent men, the Swedish Medi- 
cal Society at Stockholm, now a flourishing institution, and 
constituting the very heart of the medical profession in 
Sweden. jp? 
In 1808 he was made a member of the Royal Academy 
of Sciences, in 1810 officiated as President, and in 1818 as 
Perpetual Secretary. On the occasion of holding this ap- 
pointment for a quarter of a century, a dinner was given in 
the Academy by the members to this distinguished savant, 
which was presided over by his present Majesty, then the 
Crown Prince, who on proposing the health of Berzelius, 
expressed his grateful acknowledgment of his own obliga- 
tions to Berzelius for the valuable private instruction he 
had received from him in his younger days. In the same 
year he was appointed a member of the Royal Sanitary 
Board, of which, at the time of his death, he was the senior 
member. As a proof of the magnitude of his laborious pur- 
suits, it may be sufficient to mention that he first developed 
the electro-chemical system, and that he has also examined 
