King's College school, and studied chemistry with C. Remigius Fresenius, and afterwards with Justus Liebig at Giessen, where he graduated Ph.D. His doctoral thesis was probably a paper on limonin, a bitter principle which he discovered in the pips of oranges and lemons (published in Buchner's 'Repertorium für die Pharmacie' and abstracted in Liebig's Annalen, 1841, xl. 317). In 1845 he began his career as an analyst and lecturer on chemistry in Derby, and became known for his interest in questions concerning food and hygiene. In 1851 he served as a juror at the Great Exhibition. In 1852 he published the first edition of 'Household Chemistry,' a popular work, of which the fourth edition, published in 1862, was called 'The Science of Home Life,' and the seventh edition, published in 1869, 'The Student's Chemistry.'
In 1855 Bernays was appointed to the lectureship in chemistry at St. Mary's Hospital, London; he resigned in 1860, and accepted a similar post at St. Thomas's Hospital, which he retained till his death. Bernays was also public analyst to St. Giles's, Camberwell, and St. Saviours, Southwark, was for many years chemist and analyst to the Kent Water Company, and sometime examiner to the Royal College of Physicians. He died from bronchitis at Acre House, Brixton, on 5 Jan. 1892, and was by his own desire cremated at Woking.
Bernays was a genial man and a capable and popular teacher; he took a great interest in social matters generally, and gave over a thousand free public lectures during his lifetime. Besides the works mentioned above he published a small manual on food in 1876, an essay on 'The' Moderate Use of Alcohol True Temperance,' published in the 'Contemporary Review ' and reprinted with essays by others in 'The Alcohol Question,' various editions of 'Notes for Students in Chemistry,' and miscellaneous lectures on agricultural chemistry and other subjects. He also carried out investigations on the atmosphere of Cornish mines and on dangerous trades, and made inventions in water filtration. He was a fellow of the Chemical Society and of the Institute of Chemistry.
He married Ellen Labatt, daughter of Benjamin Evans; she died on 6 Feb. 1901 (Times, 8 Feb. 1901).
[Obituaries in the Times, 9 Jan. 1892; Journ. Chem. Soc. 1892, p. 488, by T[homas] S[tevenson]; Chemical News, lxv. 85; Nature, xlv. 258; Brit. Med. Journ. 1892, i. 148; The Analyst, 1892, xvii. 60, and index to vols. i-xx.; Brit. Mus. Cat.; King's Coll. Cal.; Bernays's own works.]
BERTHON, EDWARD LYON (1813–1899), inventor, born in Finsbury Square, London, on 20 Feb. 1813, was the tenth child of Peter Berthon, who married in 1797 a daughter of Henry Park [q. v.] of Liverpool. His father was great-grandson of St. Pol le Berthon, the only son of the Huguenot Marquis de Chatellerault, who escaped the persecutions that followed the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685. He found a refuge in Lisbon, whence his son proceeded to London. Peter Berthon was an army contractor, who was reduced from wealth to comparative poverty by the wreck of a number of his ships and the end of the war on the downfall of Napoleon. In 1828 young Berthon was sent to Liverpool to study surgery under the care of James Dawson (who had just taken over Henry Park's practice), and with Dawson he continued for more than four years. At the end of this time, having engaged himself to a niece of Mrs. Dawson, he went to Dublin to finish his course at the College of Surgeons there : but a violent attack of pneumonia, and, on his recovery, his marriage on 4 June 1834, seem to have put an end to his medical studies. He spent the greater part of the next six years travelling in France, Switzerland, and Italy. During this time he also employed himself with philosophical experiments. From childhood he had shown a remarkable aptitude for mechanical science; as a boy he had constructed an electrical machine, and had been in the habit of giving demonstrations to his companions. While at Geneva on his wedding tour — he noted the date, 28 June 1834 — he conceived the idea of applying the screw to nautical propulsion. To him it seems to have been absolutely new, and, as far as practical adaptation went, it really was so. In the autumn of 1835 he carried out a series of experiments with twin screws on a model three feet long, and arrived at the two-bladed propeller as now used. The model was then sent to the admiralty, but was returned some few weeks afterwards with the opinion that ' the screw was a pretty toy, which never would and never could propel a ship.' This so far discouraged Berthon that he never completed the patent and allowed the matter to rest. In 1838 he read in the newspaper of the invention of the screw propeller by Francis Smith [q. v.], and naturally assumed that Smith had got the idea from his abandoned sketch in the patent office. When he returned to England in 1840 he went 'to have it out with the supposed pirate.' It appeared, however, that Smith's design was as original as Berthon's, though his experiments had led him
