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The Enlightenment of Thomas Beddoes - Science, medicine, and reform (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R4,554
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The Enlightenment of Thomas Beddoes - Science, medicine, and reform (Hardcover)
Series: Science, Technology and Culture, 1700-1945
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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Thomas Beddoes (1760-1808) lived in 'decidedly interesting times'
in which established orders in politics and science were challenged
by revolutionary new ideas. Enthusiastically participating in the
heady atmosphere of Enlightenment debate, Beddoes' career suffered
from his radical views on politics and science. Denied a
professorship at Oxford, he set up a medical practice in Bristol in
1793. Six years later - with support from a range of leading
industrialists and scientists including the Wedgwoods, Erasmus
Darwin, James Watt, James Keir and others associated with the Lunar
Society - he established a Pneumatic Institution for investigating
the therapeutic effects of breathing different kinds of 'air' on a
wide spectrum of diseases. The treatment of the poor, gratis, was
an important part of the Pneumatic Institution and Beddoes, who had
long concerned himself with their moral and material well-being,
published numerous pamphlets and small books about their education,
wretched material circumstances, proper nutrition, and the
importance of affordable medical facilities. Beddoes' democratic
political concerns reinforced his belief that chemistry and
medicine should co-operate to ameliorate the conditions of the
poor. But those concerns also polarized the medical profession and
the wider community of academic chemists and physicians, many of
whom became mistrustful of Beddoes' projects due to his radical
politics. Highlighting the breadth of Beddoes' concerns in
politics, chemistry, medicine, geology, and education (including
the use of toys and models), this book reveals how his reforming
and radical zeal were exemplified in every aspect of his public and
professional life, and made for a remarkably coherent program of
change. He was frequently a contrarian, but not without cause, as
becomes apparent once he is viewed in the round, as part of the
response to the politics and social pressures of the late
Enlightenment.
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