im, on the 10th of February,
1795, to Dr. Borlase, a surgeon in large practice at Penzance. Medical
practitioners in those days dispensed their own medicines, and the
inquiring mind of this young apprentice being let loose upon a store-room
of chemicals, experimental chemistry became his favourite pursuit. His
grandfather, by adoption, allowed him to fit up a garret as a laboratory,
notwithstanding the fears of the household that "This boy, Humphry, will
blow us all into the air."

Activity and originality of mind, with a persistent habit of inquiry and
experiment, brought Davy friends who could appreciate and help him. When
Dr. Beddoes, of Bristol, was examining the Cornish coast, in 1798, he
came upon young Humphry Davy, was told of researches made by him, and
urged to engage him as laboratory assistant in a Pneumatic Institution
that he was then establishing in Bristol. Davy went in October, 1798,
then in his twentieth year; but his good friend, and grandfather by
adoption, had set his heart upon Humphry's becoming an eminent burgeon,
and even altered his will when his boy yielded to the temptation of a
laboratory for research. Men also know something of the trouble of the
hen who has a chance duckling in her brood, and sees that contumacious
chicken run into the water deaf to all the warnings of her love.

At Bristol Humphry Davy came into companionship with Coleridge and
Southey, who were then also at the outset of their career, and there are
poems of his in the Poetical Anthology then published by Southey. But at
the same time Davy contributed papers on "Heat, Light, and the
Combinations of Light," on "Phos-Oxygen and its Combinations," and on
"The Theory of Respiration," to a volume of West Country Collections,
that filled more than half the volume. He was experimenting then on
gases and on galvanism, and one day by experiment upon himself, in the
breathing of carburetted hydrogen, he almost put an end to his life.

In 1799 Count Rumford was founding the Royal Institution, and its home in
Albemarle Street was then bought for it. The first lecturer appointed
was in bad health, and in 1801 he was obliged to resign. Young Davy was
now known to men of science for the number and freshness of his
experiments, and for the substantial value of his chemical discoveries.
It was resolved by the managers, in July, 1801, that Humphry Davy be
appointed Assistant-Lecturer in Chemistry, Director of the Chemical
Labora