We mark today the death of Dr. Thomas Beddoes, driven from his post as a lecturer in chemistry at Oxford University for supporting the French revolution, a pioneer of recreational narcotics, and a medical rebel who was nearly killed in a riot caused by frogs.
A Shropshire-born physician and science writer, Beddoes never sought, nor did he ever achieve, the approval of the established order. He argued in his books that the role of a family doctor was inherently political, since most illness was caused by people's material living conditions, and that therefore doctors should work for social change: "The great principle of physical health is the equality of all beings." His work is seen as being the start of the idea of "public health."
He moved to Bristol in 1793, where he set up a Pneumatic Institute. He'd become very excited by the possibilities of what was then called pneumatic medicine, the idea that various gases could be used for therapeutic purposes. He was especially keen on using oxygen to treat asthma and consumption.
Beddoes employed the young Humphry Davy, who experimented at the Institute with nitrous oxide. Davy named it "laughing gas," and it became very popular with Bristol's population of eminent poets (who saw in it a way of communing with the numinous, or, failing that, blitzing their faces off), but it also became an important anaesthetic.
Thomas Beddoes died in his late forties, having achieved a good deal. Indeed, if the only thing he'd ever done was set Davy on his path to becoming one of the most important chemists of all time, he'd deserve lasting fame. In Bristol, though, when he's remembered at all, it's probably for the frogs ...
There was at that time a fad amongst the fashionable ladies of Bristol for drinking green tea. It was a health product, well known to cure many ailments, and people who believed in that sort of thing swilled it down by the bucket-load.
Beddoes, however, was not a fan of the stuff. He believed that self-medication was a cause of many deaths, and he was determined to kill off the green tea mania. So, he announced an experiment: he would have two ponds dug in his grounds. One he would fill with clean water - the other, with green tea. Then he would introduce frogs into both ponds, and monitor their health.
(Yes, there is a logical flaw there: amphibians live in and around water, not in and around tea. There is some suggestion that Beddoes was having a laugh, and/or that he thought anyone daft enough to believe in quack remedies would also be daft enough to be impressed by a pond full of tea with a load of dead frogs floating in it.)
When the time came, he ordered his frogs from a specialist supplier in Shropshire - Bristol being in those days, reputedly at least, frog-free. They arrived in a crate at Bristol docks, for forwarding to the Pneumatic Institute. Unfortunately for all concerned (except, perhaps, the sellers of green tea), the crate fell from the crane unloading it, cracked open, and several frogs were released onto the streets of Bristol.
And when I say several, the report at the time was that there were 10,000 of them.
A sudden plague of frogs in a frogless city did not go down well with the citizens, and when they heard who was behind it they quickly realised what must be going on. Dr Beddoes was well known to be a sympathiser with the French revolution, and he lived in that gurt big house, and it was pretty obvious that he had filled the place with Jacobin radicals no doubt plotting the downfall of the British crown. And the frogs - it all fits together, you see - the frogs were for their dinner.
A crowd of angry frog-haters began marching in the direction of the Beddoes house, openly intent on burning it to the ground with its owner inside it. At the last minute they were talked out of this course of action, by a local doctor who happened to be passing and who was able to explain to them that they were idiots. Perhaps they were shown the green tea pond and went away thinking "Well yeah, that makes perfect sense."
As for the escaped frogs - sadly, it is said that they died off pretty quickly, not from the effects of too much green tea, but because the rivers of Bristol at that time were so badly polluted as to be incapable of supporting life. Rather proving Dr Beddoes' main point, about illness being caused by the conditions in which one lives.
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Sources:
A revolution of feeling by Rachel Hewitt (Granta, 2017)
Western Daily Press 7 April 2020
www.mapyourbristol.org.uk/place/plague-frogs
www.cambridge.org/core/journals/victorian-literature-and-culture/article/confessions-of-an-english-green-tea-drinker-sheridan-le-fanu-and-the-medical-and-metaphysical-dangers-of-green-tea/E2F59E9B6D0AF4916BE95D15E79154FC