an age when ‘vigorous measures’ were thought the only ones worthy of a great physician, and his careful study of symptoms in order to arrive at the cause of a disease was put down by his contemporaries to weakness, and the acknowledged success of his treatment was unable to remove this impression. Sir Benjamin Brodie [q. v.] considered that Young ‘was either not fitted for a physician, or was too engrossed in other pursuits.’ Young himself (1811) said: ‘I have been fortunate enough … to acquire a pretty good proportion of those things for which affluence is principally desired … but I am not the more in love with my profession.’
Many of Young's writings have been characterised as obscure. While the charge has some foundation if confined to his earlier, it is unjust to extend it to his later works. The intellectual isolation of his early years, and the ease with which, carrying out his motto, ‘What one has done another can do,’ he surmounted difficulties, rendered him ignorant of the limitation of the powers of others, and he thought it necessary to give only a few steps of his argument to render the whole course of it clear. His contempt for analytical processes, engendered no doubt by the torpid condition of mathematical studies at Cambridge in his time, made him cut down all algebraic work to a minimum, and his mathematical papers are most open to the charge of obscurity. His lectures are, on the contrary, a ‘mine of good things happily expressed’ (De Morgan).
His colleague at the Royal Institution said of him: ‘He was a most amiable and good-tempered man … of universal erudition, and almost universal accomplishments. Had he limited himself to any one department of knowledge, he must have been the first in that department. But as a mathematician, a scholar, a hieroglyphist, he was eminent, and he knew so much that it was difficult to say what he did not know’ (Davy).
No opinion expressed in recent times is more worthy of attention than that of Helmholtz, who in the vast extent of his knowledge and the importance of his contributions to science so much resembled Young. He says: ‘He was one of the most clear-sighted men who have ever lived, but he had the misfortune to be too greatly superior in sagacity to his contemporaries. They gazed at him with astonishment, but could not always follow the bold flights of his intellect, and thus a multitude of his most important ideas lay buried and forgotten in the great tomes of the Royal Society of London, till a later generation in tardy advance remade his discoveries and convinced itself of the accuracy and force of his inferences.’
Young published the following works:
- ‘A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts,’ 1807, 2 vols. 4to; new ed., edited by Professor Kelland, 1845, 2 vols. 8vo.
- ‘An Introduction to Medical Literature, including a System of Practical Nosology,’ 1813, 8vo; new ed., with essay on ‘Palpitations’ added, 1823.
- ‘A Practical and Historical Treatise on Consumptive Diseases,’ 1815, 8vo.
- ‘Letter of Canova and Memoirs of Visconti on the Elgin Marbles.’ Translated (anonymous), 1816, 8vo.
- ‘Elementary Illustrations of the Celestial Mechanics of Laplace,’ 1821, 8vo.
- ‘An Account of the Recent Discoveries in Hieroglyphical Literature and Egyptian Antiquities,’ 1823, 8vo.
- ‘Enchorial Egyptian Dictionary,’ appended to the ‘Egyptian Grammar’ by Henry Tattam [q. v.], 1830.
A collection of translations, ‘Œuvres Ophtalmologiques de Thomas Young,’ made and edited with great sympathy and care by Tscherning, was published in 1894.
A portrait of Young, painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence [q. v.] for Hudson Gurney, passed into the possession of Mr. J. H. Gurney, J.P., of Keswick Hall, Norwich. A copy by Henry Perronet Briggs [q. v.] was presented by Hudson Gurney to the Royal Society in 1842, and is now in the society's rooms at Burlington House. A second copy by Thomas Brigstocke [q. v.] was presented to the governors of St. George's Hospital by friends and pupils of Young in 1851, and now hangs in the board-room. A third copy by Minna Tayler (1884) hangs in the combination room at Emmanuel College, Cambridge; and a fourth by Briggs passed to the possession of A. E. Young, esq. An engraving by George Raphael Ward from Lawrence's portrait forms the frontispiece of Peacock's ‘Life of Young.’ Others form the frontispieces of Pettigrew's ‘Life of Young,’ Tyndall's ‘Light,’ and Tscherning's ‘Œuvres Ophtalmologiques.’ A memorial tablet with profile medallion by Sir Francis Chantrey [q. v.], and inscription by Gurney, is to be seen in Westminster Abbey, and another memorial is in the Shire Hall at Taunton.
