THE LATE PROFESSOR. WILSON.'"
IT does not often happen that the biographer is fortunate enough to meet with a subject so naturally capable of successful treatment, as that which is afforded by the life of the late Professor of Technology in the University of Edinburgh. While, on the one hand, Dr. Wilson's position as a natural philosopher is sufficiently exalted to ensure for a judicious résumé of his professional labours a favourable reception at the hands of the scientific public, the peculiarities of his personal character on the other hand, no less than the actual inci- dents of his domestic life, are of a stature to excite to no common degree the sympathy and interest of the ,general reader. As might be expected front the authorship of the book, it is to the latter of these classes that the volume now before us appears to be more par- ticularly addressed. It is obvious that a sister upon whom had de- volved the task of writing the life of a dearly-loved brother is likely to be better qualified for doing justice to his private and domestic virtues, than for appraising at its exact value each of the numerous and varied scientific researches in which he had been engaged. We have no doubt whatever that Miss Wilson has acted wisely in giving so decided a prominence to that portion of her subject which she is best able to handle in a successful manner. By so doing she has not only produced a better book, but she has, in all probability, secured a far wider circle of readers than she would have been able to do if she had attempted to write her brother's memoirs front a scientific rather than from a personal point of view.
The leading events of George Wilson's life may be narrated in very few words. He was born in Edinburgh, of respectable parents, on February 21st, 1818. From a very early age he evinced a con- siderable aptitude for study ; but, being a lad of great bodily, as well
• Memoir of George Winos, M.D., P.R.S.E., Regius Professor of Technology in the University of Edinburgh, and Director of the Industrial Museum of Scotland. By his Sister, Jessie Aitken Wilson. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas ; London and Cambridge : Macmillan and Co.
as mental, vigour, his natural tastes led him to direct his attention principally to the acquisition of physical knowledge. Naturally, therefore, he elected to follow the only one of the learned pro. fessions which affords any direct scope or opportunity for the study of natural science ; and, accordingly, he entered the University of Edinburgh as a medical student, and in due time proceeded to the degree of M.D. But it was not long before he began to perceive that he was deficient in some of the most important qualifications which are indispensably necessary for the successful prosecution of either branch of the profession which he had chosen. He was far too tender-hearted ever to be a good surgeon ; and he entertained an un-
professional horror of dissection, which led him to do all in his puler
to save the bodies of hospital patients in whom he took an interest from what he regarded as desecration. His qualifications as a phy- sician are thus summed up in his own words : "What I have ever felt is, that I should be most miserable as a practitioner, for I am neither intellectually fitted for discerning the nice shades of disease, in observing and detecting which a physician's sagacity is shown, nor am I morally formed to grapple with the tremendous moral responsibility that in my eyes hangs over my profession, and I sin physically unequal and averse to the eternal trot of going rounds;
and thus I feel that, if I should practise, all labour at other things is hopeless." He accordingly resolved to devote himself to the study
of chemistry, to which, front his first acquaintance with it, he felt himself irresistibly attracted. He entered Professor Christison's laboratory as an assistant, and subsequently transferred his services in the same capacity to Professor Graham, of University College, London. Finding, however, that this latter post was not, as he had hoped, likely materially to advance his professional prospects, he shortly returned to Edinburgh, with the intention of forming a pri- vate chemical class; and soon afterwards he received a license as lec- turer in chemistry from the Royal College of Surgeons, thereby becoming one of a body of medical teachers known as the "Extra.
Academical Medical School." He continued to discharge the duties of this office for about fourteen years, until, in 1855, a new Indus- trial Museum was founded in Edinburgh, together with a professor- ship of Technology, i.e. of Chemistry in its application to the arts; when the post of director of the museum, as well as the newly- established professorial chair, was offered to, and at once accepted by, Dr. Wilson. The office was one for which he possessed peculiar qualifications; and his appointment to it gave great and universal satisfaction. Despite his rapidly failing health, he continued to devote himself to its duties with the most indefatigable zeal until late in 1859, when an attack of inflammation in the lungs carried him off -after only three days' illness, at the early age of forty-one years. The year before his death the professorship of Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh, which had long been the great object of his ambition, became vacant by the death of Dr. Gre- gory, and he was induced by his friends to enrol himself among the candidates for the post : but, though he speedily obtained promises enough to render his election a matter of certainty, the consciousness of his physical inability adequately to discharge the duties of the office induced him to retire from the contest.
In order to enable the reader fully to comprehend the character of Professor Wilson, and to appreciate justly the working of the various influences which combined to make him what he was, it is necessary to add to the foregoing brief record of his professional caster a few words respecting the coarse of his personal and domestic life. This was marked by sorrow and affliction in no common degree. Again and again did death make repeated inroads into the family circle to which he belonged. During the first seven years of his life he lost no less than four brothers and sisters; and "the darkness of these scenes and the anguish of his father and mother, made," he himself assures us, "an indelible impression upon hint." Later in life, he lost his twin-brother and his favourite sister ; and he witnessed the deaths of three out of four orphan cousins, who were brought up with the young Wilsons, and were regarded by them with a tree fraternal affection. In 1849 his own health, which had previously been very good, began to fail ; and from that time forward his life was one 'long struggle against disease. During a pedestrian excur- sion, undertaken in the autumn of that year, he chanced to sprain his ankle, and the injury, neglected at the time, gradually assumed such formidable proportions, that after two years of continual suffering, he was obliged to submit to amputation of the foot. The operation, the pain of which was unrelieved by the employment of any antesthetic agent, was successful; but the patient's recovery was retarded by the shock occasioned by the awfully sudden death of his father, who left the house one afternoon in perfect health, and was in a few hours brought back a corpse. The hopeful anticipations which the favour- able results of the operation aroused in himself and his friends were speedily dashed by the development of decided symptoms of pul- monary disease, from which he WILS never afterwards free ; and he was, on more than one occasion, brought to the brink of the grave by an attack similar to that which finally carried him off. The failure of his health was, it will be observed, precisely contempo-. mimes with the commencement of his professional career; and this fact must be borne in mind in estimating the amount of the servree which he rendered to the cause of science. Doubtless his life might have been prolonged if it. had been possible for him to give up his pr?- fessional duties, and to devote himself entirely to the care of his health ; but circumstances had put this out of his power; and, even had it been otherwise, so great was his devotion to science, that it may be doubted whether he would have thought life worth having on such terms. The contrast between the career which he marked out for himself and that which he was ultimately compelled to fulfils is well defined by his intimate friend, Dr. Cairns, in a memorial notice which appeared soon after his death in the pages of Macatilkies Magazine: "Ardent in temperament, buoyant with youth, and elastic in body as in mind, with gay humour, keen repartee, flashing fancy, and profuse literary as well as scientific faculty, under the presidency of a strong, clear judgment and a strong will, he seemed formed to cut his way to the rapid eminence and brilliant success after which he merly panted. A totally different path was marked out for him ; and in this contrast lies the moral interest and pathos of his life." The volume before us, consisting principally of selections from his correspondence with his numerous friends and relatives, furnishes us with abundance of the best and most reliable material for forming an opinion as to what manner of man Professor Wilson really was. It appears to us that quite the most striking, as well as the most attrac- tive, feature in his character was a singular power of exciting and securing to himself the personal affection of every one with whom he was brought into contact. Very remarkable evidence of the uni- versality of the operation of this faculty is afforded by the effect which was produced among all classes of his fellow-townsmen by the news of his death. He himself was in the habit of sometimes expressing his surprise at finding himself the object of friendship and kindly feeling in so many different quarters ; and he would endeavour to account for it by supposing that "there must be something of the hy- pocrite in him, or people would not esteem him so much better than lie deserved." To no one but himself, however, can his possession of this faculty be in any degree a matter of surprise. No reader of his Memoirs can fail to perceive that he possessed to a remarkable extent all those qualifications by which a man is enabled not only to make, but also to retain, friends. The very excess of tenderness and kindness of heart which spoiled him for a surgeon made him an ex- cellent friend; and a cheerful gaiety which no amount of suffering could subdue, together with a peculiar vein of quiet humour, rendered his companionship no less agreeable in a social and intellectual point of view. As a sample of the last of these qualifications we may be allowed to quote a brief extract from a letter giving an account of a steam-boat voyage from Edinburgh to Hull :
"'Twas a sorrily kept Sunday yesterday. I saw only the old gentleman who gave me the brush take out a small Testament, when he got up, and read a chapter to himself. He then offered it to a tall, old, military-like man, whom I suspect to be an East Indian general or the like. Nothing could equal the wonder, and fierceness, and politeness of the refusal. He seemed amazed that he should offer that to him (doubtless an Episcopalian, for he was afterwards hoping he'd be in Hull in time for evening prayers); angry, because it was an implication on his impiety ; and polite because it was kindly and simply offered. When I heard the repeated refusals of the old gentleman, it quite overcame me, and I laughed long and loud."
Dr. Wilson's letters contain abundant evidence that he was a man of deep and sincere religious feeling, and afford conclusive proof of the unsoundness of the opinion which is still secretly held, if not openly expressed, in certain quarters, that the study of physical science is incompatible with a due respect for religion. He himself, however, on more than one occasion expresses his regret that the position as- sumed by many physical inquirers should be such as to give to this view at least a superficial colouring of truth. With considerable energy and originality of expression he laments that students of natural philosophy should be found "standing in that maddest of all attitudes, viz, with finger pointed to this religious body and that re- ligious body, expatiating on their faults, as if at the day of judgment it would avail them anything that the Baptists were bigoted, and the Quakers self-righteous." Born of Baptist parents, Dr. Wilson had, in his early manhood, a preference for the Episcopalian form of wor- ship ; but, later in life, he joined the Congregational Church, and re- mained a member of that body until his death. He did not, however, follow the example of too many of his countrymen, and allow his re- ligious failings to interfere with or impair the geniality which was an essential part of his nature. The following extract from one of his letters bears to some extent upon this point, and expresses a sen- timent with which many of his co-religionists will have, we fear, no sympathy whatever :
"The Total Abstinence Society here wanted me to speak at a great Centenary Burns meeting, but I was glad that I had a previous engagement. I wish the abstainers all success, but their merits and those of Burns belong to very different categories. I could not praise them together, and to make a memorial celebra- tion of Burns an occasion for pointing morals from his sins, is, I think, a duty not asked by God or man at our hands. I refer to this as an unfortunate endeavour to turn a holiday into a fast-day. Let holidays be holidays."
The duty of furnishing the summary of Professor Wilson's scientific researches which is contained in the volume before us has been dis- eharged by his friend Dr. S. H. Gladstone, who has, on the whole, performed his task in a fairly creditable manner. He points out, justly enough, that Dr. Wilson's claims to scientific consideration are founded less upon any actual discoveries which he made, than Upon the acuteness which he displayed in following out and testing the value of theories originated by other inquirers. Thus, he devoted a considerable amount of time and labour to an examination of a view advocated by his friend Dr. Samuel Brown, who, misled by a fancied transmutation of carbon into silicon, put forward the hypo- thesis of the mutual convertibility of elementary substances ; and came to the conclusion that the experiments on which the theory was grounded were insufficient to establish the deduction which had been drawn from them. Perhaps the most important of his purely chemical researches, in the course of which he showed the presence of fluorine in a large number of animal and vegetable products, was Suggested in a somewhat similar manner, being originated by a sup- position that the large amount of fluoride of calcium which had been found in the fossil bones of the extinct dinornis might possibly be owitig to the transmutation of the phosphate of lime, which is the principal constituent of all osseous structures. The most complete and valuable, as well as the best known, of his investigations is of a physiological rather than of a chemical nature, being an inquiry into the prevalence and probable causes of the phenomenon known as "colour-blindness." In the course of this research he personally examined the visual peculiarities of considerably more than a thou- sand different individuals. He arrived at the somewhat startling conclusion that one person in every fifty is affected with colour- blindness in a marked degree, while the proportion of those who have an imperfect appreciation of colour is as high as one in twenty. Upon these observations he based some valuable suggestions for the improvement of railway and steam-boat signals, dwelling on the danger of relying on colour only as the means of distinction, and pointing out that the two colours, red and green, which are most frequently employed on railways, are precisely those which the colour-blind are least able to distinguish from each other. As a teacher, Dr. Wilson was eminently successful, and the same faculty of copious and varied illustration which made his lectures so attrac- tive imparts a peculiar charm to his writings on scientific subjects. He gave special attention to the biography of scientific men, pro- ducing, among other less finished works, a Life of Cavendish, which was published by the Cavendish Society. He himself gives us, in the following passage, the secret of his success in this department of literary labour : "f read," he says, "all biographies with intense in- terest. Even a man without a heart, like Cavendish, I think about, read about, and dream about, and picture to myself in all possible wars, till he grows into a living being beside me, and I put my feet in his shoes, and become for the time Cavendish, and think as he thought and do as he did." Professor Wilson was very fond of em- ploying his leisure hours in the composition of verses, some of which will be familiar to the readers of Blachwood's Magazine; and a few of the specimens which are given in the volume before us certainly pos- sess more than an average degree of merit.
We must say a few words, in conclusion, as to the manner in which Miss Wilson has performed her somewhat difficult and delicate task of writing her brother's life. On this point we are glad to be able to pronounce, on the whole, a favourable opinion. She has acted very wisely in drawing so largely upon Professor Wilson's correspon dence, and thus giving to his Memoirs, as far as possible, the cha- racter of an autobiography. Occasionally, however, she falls into the error—under the circumstances a very natural one—of inserting letters the interest of which can scarcely be expected to extend be- yond the immediate family circle of their writer. For instance, she gives us, "as a specimen of progress," a dog-Latin epistle to his sister, written when George was ten years old, which is only curious as showing how completely its writer had failed to profit by whatever instruction in Latin grammar he might at that time have received. The same sisterly feeling leads her more than once to speak of her brother's early trials in a manner which we cannot but think is some- what disproportionate to the requirements of the case. The follow- ing passage contains, perhaps, the most striking instances of the ten- dency to which we allude. "In a joint family epistle of October 20th, 1832, Daniel says : 'Two other operations have been performed at the Infirmary, but George did not see either;' while Mary remarks, 'Sometimes when George comes in and tells me that he has been preparing 12 lbs. of senna, &c., I ask him if he never feels sick. On the contrary, he says he is hungrier than before.' Thus did the brave little heart bear its first hand-to-hand fight with the foes of this sin-cursed world." These are, however, very venial errors, and detract little or nothing from the value of a book which constitutes a very pleasing memorial of a man whose life can scarcely fail to be an object of interest to the general, as well as to the scientific, reader.
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