Dr. Joseph Priestley, John Wilkinson and the French Revolution, 1789–1802

Chaloner, W. H.

doi:10.2307/3678907

Cited by 3 publications

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“…33 Burke did not attack Priestley by name until this dangerous radical had left England for Philadelphia in 1794. Priestley, an avowed friend of France and no respecter of hierarchies, a man who accepted honorary French citizenship in 1793, 34 was every bit as bad as the French.…”

Section: T H Leverementioning

confidence: 99%

Dr Thomas Beddoes: chemistry, medicine, and the perils of democracy

Levere

2009

Notes Rec. R. Soc.

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Beddoes lectured on chemistry at Oxford in the years that included the French Revolution, the Terror, and the outbreak of war with France, as well as the success in France of the chemical revolution. The very public dispute between Edmund Burke and Joseph Priestley meant that the latter's study of different kinds of air was politically tainted. Beddoes's democratic beliefs and his support for the new chemistry of Lavoisier meant that as chemist and physician he had to deal with complaints that he was potentially seditious and pro-French. His medical theories, allied to pneumatic chemistry and building on the work of Priestley, were accordingly suspect. In spite of that, he became the physician and friend to several members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham and to members of their family, and they in return became his patrons. His collaboration with James Watt was crucial for his development of pneumatic medicine. The full extent of Lunar patronage, and especially that of James Keir and Thomas Wedgwood, has hitherto not been recognized, but it was the concealed scale of that patronage that made possible the execution of Beddoes's ambitious programme of treatment and research.

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Section: T H Leverementioning

confidence: 99%

Dr Thomas Beddoes: chemistry, medicine, and the perils of democracy

Levere

2009

Notes Rec. R. Soc.

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Eighteenth-Century Science and Radical Social Theory: The Case of Joseph Priestley’s Scientific Liberalism

Kramnick¹

1992

The Scientific Enterprise

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Eighteenth-Century Science and Radical Social Theory: The Case of Joseph Priestley's Scientific Liberalism

Kramnick¹

1986

J. Br. Stud.

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In 1794 Joseph Priestley fled England and the church-and-king sentiment that had set ablaze his Birmingham house and laboratory in 1791. His flight to America was noted by the United Irishmen with a public letter. This most radical group in the entire camp of English sympathizers with the French Revolution not only lamented English repression but also offered a marvelous hymn to the tripartite linkage of America, useful science, and radical change.The Emigration of Dr. Priestley will form a striking historical fact, by which alone future ages will learn to estimate truly the temper of the present times. … But be cheerful, dear Sir, you are going to a happier world, the world of Washington and Franklin. In idea we accompany you.… We also look to the new age when man shall become more precious than fine gold, and when his ambition shall be to subdue the elements, not to subjugate his fellow creatures, to make fire, water, earth, and air obey his bidding, but to leave the pure ethereal mind, as the sole thing in nature free and invincible…. The attention of a whole scientific people [here] is bent to multiplying the means and instruments of destruction … but you are going to a country where science is turned to better use.The relationship between science and progressive politics was by no means one-way. Just as science would ameliorate the human condition, so a progressive politics would encourage scientific advances.

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Dr. Joseph Priestley, John Wilkinson and the French Revolution, 1789–1802

Cited by 3 publications

References 1 publication

Dr Thomas Beddoes: chemistry, medicine, and the perils of democracy

Dr Thomas Beddoes: chemistry, medicine, and the perils of democracy

Eighteenth-Century Science and Radical Social Theory: The Case of Joseph Priestley’s Scientific Liberalism

Eighteenth-Century Science and Radical Social Theory: The Case of Joseph Priestley's Scientific Liberalism

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