Academic Career
Talmage studied chemistry and geology at Lehigh University and Johns Hopkins University. He received a B.S. degree from Lehigh University in 1891. Talmage received a Ph.D. from Illinois Wesleyan University for nonresident work in 1896.
In the spring of 1884, while at Johns Hopkins, he journaled about laboratory experiments involving the ingestion of hashish, reporting that interviews with users conducted by himself and two colleagues yielded very different accounts of the experience. Talmage noted that the ill effects of opium were very unpleasant and had been well-documented, "ut the ill effects are reported very low in the Haschich or Hemp administration; and we have concluded to try effect of a small dose upon ourselves. . . . though I very much dislike the idea of doing such a thing, for as yet I have never known what it is to be narcotized either by tobacco, alcohol, or any drug." Thus, on three occasions, March 22, April 5, and April 6, 1884, Talmage ingested increasing doses; on the first two occasions he felt no effect, but on the third he reported simply, "Continued my experiment by taking 20 grains Cannabis Indica and and the effect was felt in a not very agreeable way."
Talmage was elected to life membership in several learned societies, and for many years was a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society (London), Fellow of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society (Edinburgh), Fellow of the Geological Society (London), Fellow of the Geological Society of America, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Associate of the Philosophical Society of Great Britain, or Victoria Institute, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Talmage taught science at Brigham Young Academy both before and after he went to study in the eastern United States. He was the president of Latter-day Saints' University until 1894 and then was president of the University of Deseret, now known as University of Utah, from 1894 to 1897. From 1897-1907 Talmage was a professor of geology at the University of Utah.
In 1909 Talmage was serving as the director of the Deseret Museum. He went to Detroit in November of that year to participate in diggings connected with general Scotford-Soper-Savage relics craze that involved the finding of supposed ancient relics in much of Michigan. Talmage would go on to denounce these findings as a forgery in the September 1911 edition of the Deseret Museum Bulletin in an article entitled "The Michigan Relics: A Story of Forgery and Deception".
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