The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes

postgraduate) at the University of East Anglia; William St Clair, Richard Serjeantson and Priya Natarajan (our beautiful astrophysicist) at Trinity College, Cambridge; Professor Christoph Bode at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich; Roderick Winstrop at the Cambridge Observatory; Jim Saulter (pharmacist) and John Allen at Penzance; Debbie James, Curator at the Herschel Museum, Bath; Lenore Symons, the Archivist at the Royal Institution, London; Celia Joicey and Pallavi Vadhia at the National Portrait Gallery; Pierre Lombarde, Directeur, Centre de Documentation, Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace, Le Bourget; Dr Paul Baronek, then of GlaxoSmithKline, for his advice on drugs and medical procedures; Alan Judd for late-night intelligence at The Reform; Patricia Duncker for discussing the fact and fiction of telescopes; Tim Dee of the BBC for producing our three drama-documentaries, The Frankenstein Experiment (Radio 3, 2002), A Cloud in a Paper Bag (Radio 3, 2007) and Anaesthesia (Radio 4, 2009); my brother Adrian Holmes of Young & Rubicam, and my sister Tessa Holmes of the London College of Printing, for their shrewd help with questions of presentation and design; my late uncle, Squadron Leader David Gordon (RAF Bomber Command), who taught me to build short-wave radios, to understand the principles of flight, and once smuggled me into the cockpit of his Vulcan V bomber (not armed); the West Kent Gliding Club and the Norfolk Hot Air Balloon Co. for some highly instructive airborne moments; Eleanor Tremain for finding Andromeda; Dr Percy Harrison, Head of Science, Eton College, for patiently trying to save me from at least some of my scientific howlers; Mr Glasgow, Department of Orthopaedics, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, for discussing anaesthetics in the few seconds before he put me under; Richard Fortey, FRS, for swift, exacting and helpful observations at proof stage; and finally Sir Michael Holroyd, for simply being such an inspiration to an entire generation of biographers (Romantic or otherwise).
    I have been very lucky at HarperCollins to have such a truly outstanding team behind this book: Robert Lacey (words), Sophie Goulden (pictures), Louise McLeman (internal design), Julian Humphries (cover design), Helen Ellis (trajectories), Douglas Matthews (the prince of indexers), and above all my dauntless, visionary editor Arabella Pike, who would have done brilliantly aboard the Endeavour (although that was a much shorter voyage than this one). Best thanks also to my agent David Godwin, who backed this starry-eyed project from its start. Two other teams have supported me far more than they can ever know: the ever-loving Dominos, and of course those wild Delancey boys. To Rose Tremain, once again: without you no book.
    R.H.

Index
    The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.
    Abbott, Benjamin, 352, 354, 357-8
    Abernethy, John, 306-13, 317-18, 320, 322, 336, 403n
    Aboukir Bay, battle of (1799), 156
    Académie des Sciences: and discovery of Uranus, 101; supports development of balloons, 125-6, 128, 133, 149; welcomes first balloon crossing of Channel, 152; awards Prix Napoléon to Davy, 299; investigates ‘animal magnetism’, 314; Davy and Gay-Lussac analyse new element for, 353-4
    Accra, 229
    Ackroyd, Peter, 308
    Adam, Dr A.K.: ‘The Long Delay: Davy to Morton’, 284n
    Adams, John, 166-7
    Adventure, HMS, 49
    Africa: exploration, 212, 214
    Africa Association (earlier Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Inland Districts of Africa), 212, 214, 229
    Aguirre, the Wrath of God (film), 228n
    air: study of, 245-7, 257; Beddoes uses in medical treatment, 251
    Akesian Society, 287
    Albertus Magnus, 248
    Aldini, Giovanni, 317, 320, 327-8
    Ali (Ludmar Moorish chief), 216
    Alströmer, Johann, 49, 56
    alternative medicine, 315n
    Amadi (Arabic guide), 224, 228-9
    American Civil