Golding Bird - Elements of Natural Philosophy

Elements of Natural Philosophy

When Bird took up lecturing on science at Guy's, he could not find a textbook suitable for his medical students. He needed a book that went into some detail of physics and chemistry, but which medical students would not find overwhelmingly mathematical. Bird reluctantly undertook to write such a book himself, based on his 1837–1838 lectures, and the result was Elements of Natural Philosophy, first published in 1839. It proved to be spectacularly popular, even beyond its intended audience of medical students, and went through six editions. Reprints were still being produced more than 30 years later in 1868. The fourth edition was edited by Charles Brooke, a friend of Bird's, after the latter's death. Brooke made good many of Bird's mathematical omissions. Brooke edited further editions and, in the sixth edition of 1867, thoroughly updated it.

The book was well received and was praised by reviewers for its clarity. The Literary Gazette, for instance, thought that it "teaches us the elements of the entire circle of natural philosophy in the clearest and most perspicuous manner". The reviewer recommended it as suitable not just for students and not just for the young, saying that it "ought to be in the hands of every individual who desires to taste the pleasures of divine philosophy, and obtain a competent knowledge of that creation in which they live".

Medical journals, on the other hand, were more restrained in their praise. The Provincial Medical and Surgical, for instance, in its review of the second edition, thought that it was "a good and concise elementary treatise ... presenting in a readable and intelligible form, a great mass of information not to be found in any other single treatise". But the Provincial had a few technical quibbles, among which was the complaint that there was no description of the construction of a stethoscope. The Provincial reviewer thought that the book was particularly suitable for students who had no previous instruction in physics. The sections on magnetism, electricity and light were particularly recommended.

In their review of the 6th edition, Popular Science Review noted that the author was now named as Brooke and observed that he had now made the book his own. The reviewers looked back with nostalgia to the book they knew as "the Golding Bird" when they were students. They note with approval the many newly included descriptions of the latest technology, such as the dynamos of Henry Wilde and Werner von Siemens, and the spectroscope of Browning.

The scope of the book was wide-ranging, covering much of the physics then known. The 1839 first edition included statics, dynamics, gravitation, mechanics, hydrostatics, pneumatics, hydrodynamics, acoustics, magnetism, electricity, atmospheric electricity, electrodynamics, thermoelectricity, bioelectricity, light, optics, and polarized light. In the 1843 second edition Bird expanded the material on electrolysis into its own chapter, reworked the polarized light material, added two chapters on "thermotics" (thermodynamics – a major omission from the first edition), and a chapter on the new technology of photography. Later editions also included a chapter on electric telegraphy. Brooke was still expanding the book for the sixth and final edition. New material included the magnetic properties of iron in ships and spectrum analysis.