New Light on John Davy

John Davy (1790-1868), the only brother of Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), was an army doctor, serving overseas, in various posts, in Belgium, France, Ceylon, the Ionian Islands, Malta, and the West Indies. He was also a researcher, a writer in his own right, and the editor of his brother's works. This study, drawing principally on three unpublished manuscript sources recovered during work on the Davy Letters Project, examines a crucial, formative period in John Davy's life - the years 1808-1814 - and situates him in the cultures and networks, scientific and literary, of which he was part. It explores John Davy's time working as an assistant at the Royal Institution (1808-1811), a period he spent in Edinburgh as a student (1811-1813), and his engagement there in a scientific dispute with John Murray (1778-1820) over the chemical composition of muriatic acid gas, and the time he spent in his native Cornwall in 1814, prior to his first medical posting with the military.