While he was recording these splendid discoveries in his second Bakerian lecture, Mr Davy was thrown into a state of fever, and laboured under the deepest apprehension that he would die before he had finished his paper. This state of his mind was the prelude to a severe and long-protracted disease, which his friend and physician Dr Babington considered as the result of over-fatigue and excitement from his experimental labours and discoveries. During five weeks 'he struggled between life and death,' and it was not till the end of nine weeks that his convalescence commenced. The anxious enquiries of all ranks exhibited the personal regard which he commanded, and the public importance which was attached to his recovery.
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About Humphry Davy
Humphry Davy was a 18th-century British chemist and inventor. Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet was a British chemist and inventor who invented the Davy lamp and a very early form of arc lamp. He is also remembered for isolating, by using electricity, several elements for the first time: potassium and sodium in 1807 and calcium, strontium, barium, magnesium and boron the following year, as well as for discovering the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. Read more on Wikipedia →