James Woodhouse was an American chemist and surgeon. He was the chair of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania from 1795 to 1809.
Background
James Woodhouse was born on 17 November 1770 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was the second son of William Woodhouse, an officer in the army of the Young Pretender, and his wife, Anne Martin, daughter of Dr. William Martin of Edinburgh. Immediately after their marriage in 1766, the parents went from Alnwick, England, to Philadelphia, where the father began a business as a bookseller and stationer. No records in regard to other children of this worthy couple have been discovered.
Education
Woodhouse entered the University of the State of Pennsylvania (now University of Pennsylvania) in 1784, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in 1787 and his Master of Arts. in 1790. He studied medicine under Dr. Benjamin Rush, and graduated from Penn’s medical school (now Perelman School of Medicine) as Doctor of Medicine in 1792, at the first commencement after the 1791 union of the medical departments of the College of Philadelphia and the University of the State of Pennsylvania.
Career
Before finishing this degree, Woodhouse served in the army as a medical assistant, taking part in General St. Clair’s campaign against the western Indians in 1791.
James Woodhouse presented an inaugural dissertation, "On the Chemical and Medicinal Properties of the Persimmon Tree and the Analysis of Astringent Vegetables." This contribution met with general acclaim and very probably caused Woodhouse to abandon medicine for chemistry, for in the same year he founded the Chemical Society of Philadelphia, one of the earliest chemical societies in the world. It was an international organization, of which for seventeen years Woodhouse was senior president.
On his assumption of the chair of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania in 1795, Woodhouse entered upon a career of research that continued through a period of fourteen years with remarkable consequences. It was there, by devotion and unusual skill, accompanied with inexhaustible patience, that he gave the most convincing arguments against the doctrine of phlogiston; frequently his demonstrations were made in the presence of Joseph Priestley, a believer in the phlogiston theory, who was a regular visitor to Woodhouse's small but famous laboratory. There, too, he liberated by original methods the metal potassium (1808) and performed elaborate experiments on nitrous oxide gas, confirming its anesthetic properties (1806). He executed all the chemical analytical work (1798) necessary to establish the basaltic nature of certain important rock formations and exhibited attractive experiments on the conduct of metals toward nitric acid. Besides these results he engaged in profound studies on the chemistry and production of white starch, superior to Polish starch; the industrial purification of camphor (1804); the demonstration of the superiority of anthracite coal over bituminous coal for industrial purposes (1808); and conducted an extended series of trials on bread-making.
Membership
Woodhouse was a member of the American Philosophical Society, and contributed to its transactions, to Samuel L. Mitchell's Medical Repository, and to John R. Coxe"s Medical Museum.