24
THE BULLETIN
THOMAS YOUNG, CONT.
Brocklesby, a wealthy and distinguished
London physician who had studied
at Edinburgh and Leiden. Whatever
his diagnosis, Young’s symptoms were
brought under control by Brocklesby, and
he continued to live with the Berkley
family until 1792.
2
He became active in
the abolitionist movement some time
during his stay.
Brocklesby offered to finance Young’s
medical training and set him up in a
London practice. In 1792, Young moved
to London and began attending medical
lectures at St. Bartholomew Hospital. He
also enrolled in the Hunterian school run
by Hunter’s nephew Matthew Baillie and
William Cruickshank. Young continued to
pursue his interest in the physical sciences
while attending the medical lectures.
His first paper, while still in the Hunterian
school, was on visual accommodation.
Although Young was not the first to
propose that accommodation was
accomplished by changes in the curvature
of the lens, he was the first to prove it.
Brocklesby read his paper before the Royal
Society in May 1793, and it was published
in the Royal Society’s
Philosophical
Transactions
. John Hunter claimed credit for
the work,
3
but Young successfully defended
his work. Young was elected to the Royal
Society on June 19, 1794.
Because the prestigious English universities
demanded membership in the Church
of England, Young decided to transfer to
Edinburgh in October of 1794. Edinburgh
was cheap, required no religious affiliation,
had lectures in English, provided extensive
bedside teaching and offered an MD in
three years. On his way to Edinburgh, Young
stopped in Derby to meet Erasmus Darwin,
4
considered the great naturalist of the era.
Darwin gave Thomas letters of introduction
to Edinburgh’s intellectual elite.
Edinburgh didn’t live up to Young’s
expectations. He criticized it for its lack
of original thinking and considered many
of the faculty second rate. He furthered
his study of classic Greek history and
literature and took up music, mastering
the flute. He also attended dances and
the theater, his first overt break with his
strict Quaker background. Contrary to his
usual sedentary pursuits, he explored the
Scottish highlands on horseback for long
periods of time.
He never completed the program in
Edinburgh. Instead, he left Edinburgh
for Gottingen University in Germany. He
passed his examinations by the Medical
Faculty there on April 30, 1796, and was
awarded his MD in July of that year.
5
He
then traveled to various medical centers in
central Europe before returning to England.
When he returned to London, he was
shocked to learn that the Royal College
of Physicians would not recognize his
Gottingen degree, nor would they recognize
the time he had spent in Edinburgh. Young
was forced to attend classes at Cambridge
for two years in order to get a Bachelor
of Medicine degree.
6
Attendance at
Cambridge required Thomas to become a
member of the Church of England.
Upon the death of his great-uncle
Brocklesby, Young inherited half of
the estate, and he became financially
independent. However, the move to
Cambridge also alienated him from the
Quaker church and his family. He was
formally disowned by the church in 1797,
and there is no further mention of contact
with his parents during his lifetime.
Thomas spent most of his time at Cambridge
doing independent reading. He also did a
series of physics experiments concentrating
on sound and the motion of fluids.
It was not until 1800 that Young was finally
allowed to practice medicine in London.
7
Thomas decided to sell his great-uncle’s
mansion near Hyde Park and buy a house
on Welbeck Street in the Harley Street area
of upscale medical practices. He read his
paper on the function of the human eye
before the Royal Society that same year,
and it was published in 1801.
In 1802, Young returned to his research
in physics and began lecturing at the
Royal Institution.
8
These lectures were all
nonmedical and covered almost all aspects
of physical science. Unfortunately, Young
was a poor lecturer. He wasn’t a fluent
speaker and seemed incapable of presenting
his ideas in a straightforward manner.
Because of his obtuse style, Young’s
audience missed many of his ideas and
discoveries, and he was never a popular
lecturer. He delivered close to 100 lectures,
almost all of them on breakthroughs in
physics and engineering. He outlined his
experiments proving the wave theory of
light, elasticity (Young’s Modulus), vision
and color, and capillary and surface tension.
He defined kinetic energy for the first
time, estimated the size of the molecule,
and made outstanding predictions about
electricity and magnetism.
At the end of 1803, Young stopped
lecturing at the Royal Institution because
he thought it was preventing his medical
practice from taking off.
9
He began a
period of doing only research in medicine.
He described astigmatism for the first time.
He devised a system of measuring the size
of the eye and proved the human eye was
not a true sphere.
On June 14, 1804, he married the 18-year-
old Eliza Maxwell. Despite the myriad of
sources available on him, no details of her
background or how they met is available.
However, there are frequent mentions
of how happy his marriage was and how
supportive his wife was of him. They had
no children. That year was also significant
2. He did spend two months with Brocklesby in 1791
and enjoyed meeting and talking to his uncle’s
intellectual friends, including Edmund Burke,
William Windham, Charles Burney, and Joshua
Reynolds.
3. John Hunter died before he ever gave his lecture
before the Royal Society. His assistant continued
to feud with Young for the remainder of his career.
4. Grandfather of Charles Darwin.
5. His thesis was on the organs of the human voice
and was dedicated to his great-uncle Brocklesby.
6. The course at Cambridge was poorly thought of.
The school considered science to be beneath their
classic role. Thomas felt even more strongly that
they were completely out of touch with modern
medicine and even more out of touch with science
and math. He felt the university faculty had no
influence on his education.
7. He had his Bachelor of Medicine degree, but
Cambridge would not grant his MD for another
five years.
8. His salary was 300£ per year.
9. Luckily all of his lectures were collected and
printed. They are still being referenced to this day.
