Chemical Lectures

Print: Chemical Lectures / Designed & Published by Thomas Rowlandson, James St. Adelphi [London], nd.[c.1810]. Etching, col.; image 23x33cm on sheet trimmed to 25x34.5cm. Satire featuring the young Humphry Davy lecturing to a mixed audience at the Surry [ie, Surrey] Institution in London, chemical apparatus on the lecturing bench; in the audience is [?] Friedrich Accum (1769-1838), appointed chemistry lecturer at the SI in 1803), with Accum's book 'Chemical lectures' in his pocket. In frame 28x37x2cm. [BM11605]. NB: In the Annals of Science April 2000, an article suggests that the lecturer in the scene is in fact Accum himself, and that Davy did not lecture at the Surrey (name not in official lists); however the lecturer is depicted as a young man, whereas Accum by 1810 is forty years of age.