The Age of Wonder (89 page)

134
Paris, vol 1, p97

135
Cartwright, p320

136
Bristol Mirror,
9 January 1847, from ibid., p317

137
JD Memoirs, pp80-1

138
Philosophical Magazine,
May-June 1801, from Treneer, p78

139
David Knight, essay in the
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
It is curious that no essential improvement has taken place in the design of chemical batteries since the nineteenth century, and this is currently the greatest single obstacle to the efficient global use of solar energy from solar panels. (Conversation with Richard Mabey on the banks of the river Waveney, midsummer’s day 2008.)

140
Dorothy A. Stansfield,
Thomas Beddoes MD: Chemist, Physician, Democrat,
Reidel Publishing, Boston, 1984, pp120, 234-42; also J.E. Stock,
Memoirs of Thomas Beddoes,
1811

141
HD Mss Bristol, Davy to John King, 22 June 1801, Ms 32688/31

142
HD Mss Bristol, Davy to John King, 14 November 1801, Ms 32688/33

143
Ibid.

144
Coleridge,
Letters,
1802

145
HD Works 2, pp311-26

146
Ibid., p314

147
Ibid. pp318-19

148
Ibid., p321

149
Ibid., p323

150
Ibid.

151
Ibid., p326

152
Preface,
Lyrical Ballads,
1802. See discussion in Mary Midgley,
Science and Poetry,
Routledge, 2001

153
Maria Edgeworth, letter, 8 October 1802; from Lamont-Brown, p59

154
HD Archive Mss Box 13c p32; and Golinski, pp194-7

155
Coleridge to Southey, 17 February 1803,
Collected Letters,
vol 2, p490

156
Davy to Coleridge, March 1804; see Holmes, p360

157
Paris, vol 2, pp198-9

158
Ibid., p199

159
See Nicholas Roe,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Sciences of Life,
2001, pp142-4

160
Partly reprinted in HD Works 5 and 8; lucidly discussed in Harold Hartley,
Humphry Davy,
Open University, 1966, pp50-74; and Oliver Sacks,
Uncle Tungsten

161
JD Memoirs, pp116-17

162
‘Introduction to Electro-Chemical Science’, originally delivered March 1808, HD Works 8, pp274-305

163
HD Works 8, p281

164
HD Works 8; see Hartley, pp50-4

165
Treneer, p111

166
HD Works 5, pp59-61

167
Hartley, p56

168
Beddoes, 17 November 1808, from Stansfield, p239

169
Henry Brougham, ‘Three essays on Humphry Davy’,
Edinburgh Review,
1808, vol 11: first pp390-8; second pp394-401; third pp483-90

170
Coleridge to Tom Poole, 24 November 1807

171
Treneer, p104

172
JD Memoirs, p117; HD Works 8, p355

173
HD Archive, quoted in Holmes,
Coleridge: Darker Reflections,
p119

174
‘Written after Recovery from a Dangerous Illness’, printed in JD Memoirs, pp114-16

175
Consolations in Travel,
1830, Dialogue II, HD Works 9, pp254-5

176
Ibid., p255

177
JD Memoirs, pp394, 397

178
Consolations,
Dialogue II, HD Works 9, pp254-5. The story of Josephine Dettela, 1827-29, will be continued in my Chapter 9

179
Stansfield, pp194-5

180
Davy to Coleridge, December 2008,
Collected Letters,
vol 3, pp170-1; Treneer, p113

181
Stansfield, p 247

182
HD Archive Mss Box 14 (i), note dated February 1829, Rome. See also Stansfield, p249

183
British Public Characters, 1804-5
(1809), British Library catalogue 10818.d. 1

184
Anna Barbauld, ‘The Year 1811’ (1812)

185
Coleridge’s note, 1809, in
Notebooks,
vol 2, entry no. 1855

186
HD Works 8, p354

Chapter 7: Dr Frankenstein and the Soul

1
Fanny Burney, ‘A Mastectomy’, 30 September 1811, in the
The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney (Madame d’Arblay),
vol 6, edited by Joyce Hemlow, Oxford, 1975, pp596-616

2
Ibid., p600, footnote

3
Druin Burch,
Digging up the Dead: The Life and Times of Astley Cooper,
Chatto & Windus, 2007, p179. Besides much else, Burch has a chastening section on concepts of pain endurance, anaesthesia and surgery at this period, pp172-82

4
JB Correspondence 5, no. 1616

5
Sharon Ruston,
Shelley and Vitality,
Palgrave, 2005, p39

6
See Holmes,
Coleridge: Darker Reflections,
1998

7
John Hunter, 1794, from Ruston, p40

8
John Abernethy,
Enquiry into Mr Hunter’s Theory of Life: Two Lectures,
1814 and 1815, p38; and Ruston, p43

9
Abernethy,
Enquiry,
pp48-50

10
Ruston, p45

11
Gascoigne,
Banks and the English Enlightenment,
pp157-9

12
See Tim Fulford, Debbie Lee and Peter J. Kitson, ‘Exploration, Headhunting and Race Theory’, in
Literature, Science and Exploration in the Romantic Era,
CUP, 2004

13
Holmes,
Shelley: The Pursuit,
p 290

14
See
Shelley’s Prose,
edited by David Lee Clark

15
Holmes,
Shelley,
pp286-90; also Ruston, pp91-100

16
Ruston, p193

17
William Lawrence,
Natural History of Man,
1819, pp6-7

18
William Lawrence,
Introduction to Comparative Anatomy,
1816, pp169-70; and Ruston, p50

19
William Lawrence:
The Natural History of Man
(Lectures on Physiology and Zoology), 1819, p106

20
Ibid., p8; and Ruston, pp15-16

21
Lawrence,
Introduction to Comparative Anatomy,
p174; and Ruston, p16

22
In his letters of 1797-98, and later Notebooks. See Holmes, ‘Kubla Coleridge’, in
Coleridge: Early Visions

23
Hermione de Almeida,
Romantic Medicine and John Keats,
OUP, 1991, pp66-73

24
Holmes, ‘The Coleridge Experiment’,
Proceedings of the Royal Institution,
vol 69, 1998, p312

25
Nicholas Roe, ‘John Thelwall’s Essay on Animal Vitality’, in
The Politics of Nature,
Palgrave, 2002, p89

26
Burch,
Digging up the Dead,
2007

27
Thelwall, ‘Essay towards a Definition of Animal Vitality’, 1793, quoted in Nicholas Roe,
The Politics of Nature,
pp89-91

28
Blagden to Banks, 27 December 1802, JB Correspondence 5, no. 1704

29
G Aldini,
An Account of the Late Improvements in Galvanism…Containing the Author’s Experiments on the Body of a Malefactor Executed at Newgate,
London, 1803; see Fred Botting (editor),
New Casebooks: Frankenstein,
Palgrave, 1995, p125

30
Quarterly Review,
1819, from
Frankenstein,
Oxford World Classics, pp243-50

31
B.R. Haydon,
Diary,
1817; Penelope Hughes-Hallett,
The Immortal Dinner,
2000; Mary Midgley,
Science and Poetry,
pp50-5

32
Quoted by Burch, pp154-5. For a darker view of dissection see Helen MacDonald,
Human Remains: Dissection and its Histories,
Yale UP, 2006

33
Holmes,
Shelley: The Pursuit,
pp360-1

34
‘Theory of Life’ (1816), in
Coleridge: Shorter Works and Fragments,
edited by H.J. and J.R. Jackson, vol 1, Princeton, 1995, p502

35
Holmes,
Coleridge: Darker Reflections,
1998, p479

36
Hermione de Almeida,
Romantic Medicine and John Keats,
p102

37
Coleridge to Wordsworth, 30 May 1815,
Coleridge Collected Letters
4, pp574-5

38
Richard Burton quoted in Andrew Motion,
Keats,
p430

39
John Keats, ‘Lamia’ (1820), lines 229-38

40
Ibid., lines 47-60

41
Ibid., lines 249-53

42
Ibid., lines 146-60

43
Davy’s ‘Discourse Introductory to Lectures on Chemistry, 1802, HD Works 2, pp311-26

44
Frankenstein,
1818, Chapter 2, Penguin Classics

45
Mary Shelley’s Journal,
25 August-5 September 1814

46
In September 1815 at Great Marlow; see Holmes,
Shelley,
p296

47
Mary Shelley, ‘Introduction’ to
Frankenstein
1831 text

48
Frankenstein,
1818, Chapter 1, Penguin Classics

49
JB Correspondence 5, no. 1804

50
J.H. Ritter as featured in www.CorrosionDoctors

51
Walter Wetzels, ‘Ritter and Romantic Physics’, in
Romanticism and the Sciences,
edited by Cunningham and Jardine, 1990. The best account of the extraordinary writer Novalis appears in Penelope Fitzgerald’s inspired novel
The Blue Flower,
1995

52
JB Correspondence 5, no. 1748, pp316-17

53
Ibid., no. 1790, p368

54
Ibid., no. 1799, p387

55
For a wider perspective see ‘Death, Dying and Resurrection’, in Peter Hanns Reill,
Vitalizing Nature in the Enlightenment,
California UP, 2005, pp171-6

56
Frankenstein,
1818, vol 1, Chapter 5, Penguin Classics, p56

57
These connections are further traced by Ruston, pp86-95

58
Lawrence,
Lectures,
1817, pp6-7

59
Frankenstein,
1818, vol 2, Chapter 3, Penguin Classics, pp99-100

60
Ibid., Chapter 8, p132

61
Ibid., Chapter 9, pp140-1

62
Ibid., Chapter 9, p141

63
Ibid., vol 3, Chapter 2, p160

64
Ibid., Chapter 3, p160

65
Ibid., pp164-5

66
Frankenstein,
1831 text, pp178, 180, 186. My italics

67
Ibid., p189

68
Text from 1823 leaflet about
Presumption;
see Fred Botting (editor),
New Casebooks: Frankenstein,
Palgrave, 1995. The evolution and impact of the novel is brilliantly disclosed by William St Clair in
The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period,
OUP, 2004