Overview
This letter is notable because it represents Beddoes’s medical and scientific work at its apogee. The Pneumatic Institution for which he had raised funds since 1794 had been operational since March 1799 and had, owing to Humphry Davy’s preparation of nitrous oxide, achieved what seemed to be an immediate breakthrough — a gas that changed both bodily and mental states. Beddoes was optimistic it would cure paralytic patients altogether; his choice of Davy to conduct research at the Institution had been spectacularly vindicated. Simultaneously, digitalis was alleviating the symptoms of consumption in a striking manner. This drug had been pioneered by Beddoes’s correspondents William Withering and Erasmus Darwin — old friends of the addressee James Watt; Beddoes himself had extended its use in cases of consumption. Again, results seemed to vindicate his efforts; Beddoes, writing to Watt, seemed quite clearly to be delivering on the promising discoveries that the previous generation — the Lunar Society — had initiated. He was the new focus of a Midlands Enlightenment that had once centred on Birmingham and Derby, passing on the news that Richard Lovell Edgeworth and his daughter Maria were in Bristol and were writing a book on the education of the Irish poor. Educational reform had been a topic of interest to the Lunar Society members; several had published schemes or launched schools. It had also been under debate in Beddoes’s circle for several years: Thomas and Josiah Wedgwood, Coleridge, Wordsworth and Beddoes himself had all worked on practical educational projects while elaborating a theory of childhood learning. The Edgeworths had published some of their ideas in their 1798 text Practical Education.

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Thomas Beddoes to James Watt Sr, 29 May 1799

Dear Sir

We have been busy at the pneum^c Instⁿ in investigating the extraordinary properties of gaseous oxyd of azote — which seems to have prodigious power over the sensibility of the human frame, greatly exalting it — & being perfectly respirable to a certain dose¹ — but it requires a good deal of care in preparing — & we have much extremely new & curious to tell on the chemistry & physiology as well of this air as of many of the neutral salts — which we shall tell as soon as we have ascertained the facts to our satisfaction² —

After much experience of digitalis, I will venture to say its efficacy has nothing to do with haemoptysis³ exclusively⁴ — It prevents consumption & cures consumption in all temperaments alike — & as far as I can judge of tubercules in the living subject, it removes them — The only drawbacks upon its power are the advanced period of the disease & extreme puniness of constitution.⁵ Mrs Beddoes’s life has certainly been saved by it — & I see no reason why the cure sh^d not prove permanent —

I attend to what you say of hydrocarbonate⁶ — We have had little to do with it lately. Davy made himself (as you may suppose) very ill by taking 3 full inspirations of it undiluted, having previously emptied his lungs as well as he c^d

Mr Edgeworth regretted extremely that he had not the good fortune to meet with you & hopes he shall be more lucky in his return which will take place in about 6 weeks.⁷ He is at present writing a book about the education of the Irish poor — or rather Miss Edgeworth writes what occurs to both⁸ —

Begging mine & Mrs B’s comp^ts to Mr J Watt, I am D^r Sir

Yours sincerely

Thomas Beddoes

29 May 1799

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Notes

1. As Beddoes described in Notice of Some Observations Made at the Medical Pneumatic Institution (Bristol: printed by Biggs and Cottle, for T. N. Longman and O. Rees, London, 1799).

2. Humphry Davy presented an initial report about his enquiries into ammoniacal salts and nitrous oxide (including his method of preparing it) in A Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts, 3 (April 1799–March 1800), 515–18 (CLHD, I, 39-44). Full details of his exhaustive investigations into nitrous oxide and other gases appeared in his Researches, Chemical and Philosophical; Chiefly Concerning Nitrous Oxide, or Dephlogisticated Nitrous Air, and its Respiration (London: J. Johnson, 1800).

3. Coughing of blood.

4. In his letter to Beddoes of 26 May, Watt suggested that all three of Beddoes’s preferred new treatments for consumption — digitalis, nitrous oxide, and confining patients in an atmosphere replete with the effluvia from cow manure — might work in the same way, by lowering the circulation of blood (LoB MS 3219/4/118/180).

5. Beddoes reported the curative effect of digitalis on consumption in similarly glowing terms in his Essay on the Causes, Early Signs, and Prevention of Pulmonary Consumption for the Use of Parents and Preceptors (Bristol: Biggs and Cottle, 1799), stating, on p. 270, that ‘consumption will henceforward as regularly be cured by the fox-glove, as ague [malaria] by Peruvian bark [containing quinine]’. This enthusiastic announcement was heavily criticised (see Stock, p. 175), and Beddoes toned his remarks down in a second edition published in November (also of London: sold by Longman and Rees, and by W. Sheppard, Bristol, 1799), pp. 265–271.

6. In his letter of 26 May (LoB MS 3219/4/118/180), Watt had reminded Beddoes that inhalation of hydrocarbonate also lowered heart rate and benefitted cases of haemoptysis, if used cautiously. Watt had been experimenting with and advocating for inhalation of this gas since 1794. See, for instance, Watt’s letter to John Ferriar, 19 December 1794: ‘the Consumptive Patients here who have inspired the HydroCarbonate, have felt astonishing relief. It is the most powerful & active of all the airs and should be given very cautiously, say diluted with 20 times its quantity of common air. One consumptive patient who a week before could not go up stairs, walked a few days ago a few miles without injury. His expectoration and cough are nearly gone, his fever & pains in the chest are entirely so’ (LoB 3219/6/7/20-21).

7. Richard Lovell Edgeworth and his family had been in Clifton.

8. Richard Lovell Edgeworth and Maria Edgeworth had published Practical Education in 1798; in February 1799 Richard Lovell had given a speech in the Irish parliament developing his ideas on the education of the Irish poor (see the report in Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Esq, 2 vols (London: R. Hunter, 1820), II, 246-49, and The Substance of Three Speeches, delivered in the House of Commons of Ireland, February 6, March 4, and March 21, 1800, upon the subject of an union with Great Britain (London: J. Johnson, 1800). The Edgeworths also discuss the education of the Irish poor, obliquely, in their Essay on Irish Bulls (1802).