J R Soc Med 2004;97:599-602
doi:10.1258/jrsm.97.12.599
© 2004 Royal Society of Medicine
William Close (1775-1813): medicine, music, ink and engines in the Lake District
Damian Gardner-Thorpe MRCS MRCGP 1
Christopher Gardner-Thorpe FRCP FACP 2
John Pearn FRCP FRACP 3
1 27 Marlborough Buildings, Bath BA1 2LY
2 The Coach House, 1A College Road, Exeter EX1 1TE, UK
3 Royal Children's Hospital, Herston, Brisbane Q4029, Australia
E-mail:
cgardnerthorpe{at}doctors.org.uk
 |
INTRODUCTION
|
|---|
Within the chronology of medicine there are occasional figures—for
example,
Leonardo da Vinci on a broader canvas—whose inventiveness
has
bequeathed valuable legacies in diverse fields of human
endeavour. Erasmus
Darwin (1731-1802)
1
was one such, Ferdinand
von Helmholtz (1821-1894)
another.
2 We believe
that to this
company should be added the little-known Lakeland surgeon and
apothecary,
William Close (1775-1813). In his brief life of 38 years, in
addition
to 'diligent attention to the duties of his
profession'
3 he
contributed
to the broader betterment of humankind with an extraordinary
array
of
inventions
4—notably
in mine safety, brass musical
instruments and hydraulics. Two hundred years
have elapsed since
this kind and respected village doctor invented his
'Engine
for raising water by the lateral Communication of Motion'.
We
believe that this is an appropriate time to record a short biography.
|
PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL LIFE
|
|---|
William Close was born of Yorkshire and Lake District lineage
'about
the 25th of May,
1775'.
4 His
parents moved to the Isle
of Walney, in the Lake District of north-west
England, where
William was educated by the Reverend Samuel Hunter, the
curate-schoolmaster.
In 1790, when 15 years of age, William was apprenticed to
Mr
Roger Parkinson, surgeon of Burton-in-Kendal, where he lived
until
completing his indenture in
1796.
4 During the
next year
(1796-1797) he attended the University of Edinburgh Medical
School
and, obtaining his Diploma on 18 April 1797, immediately
began medical and
surgical practice at Dalton where he spent
the remaining 16 years of his
life.
The Furness peninsula, with the small town of Dalton-in-Furness at its
centre, was both rural and industrial. An extensive rural landscape was dotted
with coal, copper, slate, saltpetre and iron-ore mines. The Industrial
Revolution saw one of its early centres in the region, with iron worked and
smelted in Furness for the emergent Barrow industries of shipbuilding and
heavy industry.5
Close involved himself in the trades of his patients, was friends with the
miners, and involved himself in all aspects of countryside life. He was fond
of riding—'an absolute necessity for a surgeon in that large and
sparsely populated
district'.4
In 1803 he married Isabel Charnock of the village of Newton, one mile south
of Dalton. The couple had two children, John (born in 1805) and Jane (born in
1806). Close was well regarded as the surgeon and apothecary of the district.
Details survive of his stocks of drugs and the books and scientific equipment
and chemicals he obtained for his dispensary. He lived frugally and did not
own his own house. He was described as 'a little slender man, very
clever, but rather changeable... and one who devoted himself assiduously to
his professional duties, and at the same time found leisure, not only for
careful investigation and research into the history, topography and
archaeology of Furness, but in the arts of drawing and music... and to
philosophical experiments [physics] and the various departments of general
literature and was an expert shorthand
writer'.4
In 1799, within three years of Jenner's discovery of vaccination to
prevent smallpox, he introduced inoculation to the peninsula of Furness. In
the days before institutional ethics committees
'he took up a temporary residence in Rampside [a village near the sea,
six miles southeast of Dalton], and made a proposal to have all the children
of the lower classes, thereabouts, inoculated at his expense. The vaccine
disease having gone through its progress, several of the children were exposed
to the infectious effluvia arising from other children in the neighbourhood,
who were ill of the confluent smallpox, but all escaped without manifesting
any symptoms of infection. This experiment, made so openly, removed any doubt
and prejudice, and confirmed the efficacy of the new discovery in the most
satisfactory manner, and during the next five years the neighbourhood was free
from the
smallpox'.4
After his death, a single one-paragraph obituary described William Close as
a doctor 'deservedly esteemed for his candour, sincerity and
benevolence...'.3
The miners in his community doubtless esteemed him most for his contributions
to work safety. He invented an improved lamp for burning
tallow6 and a new
method for sand-tamping of explosive
charges;7 and he
also published, with full acknowledgement to the primary inventor, a
colleague's technique for preventing premature explosion of such
charges.8,9
However, in this article we focus on his contributions in other spheres.
|
MUSIC
|
|---|
William Close was a good musician and his particular interest
in brass
instruments led him in 1797 to establish a workshop
in his home and apothecary
shop in Dalton. He made brass and,
occasionally, silver trumpets, French horns
and bugles. Brass
instruments at that time were essentially restricted to
notes
of the harmonic progression. For example, a trumpet with a tube
length
such that the fundamental note was D could obtain D-D-A-D-F#-A-C-D
and so on
by varying the embouchure. (Expert players were able
to achieve additional
notes by a technique known as lipping.)
Since 1715, crook, or shanks had been
inserted into instruments
to alter the fundamental note. In his workshop,
Close built
and experimented with modifications to these crooks. His first
invention
was a drainage spittle-cock. A patent application on 2 September
1811
described these cocks as 'Tubes to let off the accumulated moisture
arising
from condensation during performance'. The patent was granted
the
following year. It was perhaps as a consequence of making
these drainage holes
that Close hit upon the idea of making
further holes that would allow the
performer to play an octave
scale.
10 As early
as 1798 he had purchased an organ pipe and box and
quantities of rolled lead
and pewter. Prototype uncoiled trumpets
were crafted out of brown soap and
paper, and in these models
he found where to place holes that would widen the
instrument's
capabilities. From 1801 to 1812 he made and sold trumpets,
bugles
and French horns with these modifications. They were known as
'Polyphonian'
instruments and he sent specimens to the bandmaster of
the Headquarters
of the British Army in Spain, to the Masters of the Duke of
Kent's
and the Duke of Cumberland's bands, and also to Thomas
Percival,
Musical Instrument Maker of 89 St James Street,
London.
4
In 1810 Close gave a paper to the Society of Arts and Manufacturers under
the title Improvements in Various Brass Instruments. The Society
subsequently offered him its Silver
Medal3 but he
declined it.
Two years later he was successful in obtaining a patent for his keyed brass
instruments which 'by means of certain tubular branches, additaments, or
appendages, communicating with the main channels of the said instruments,
having in them holes or ventiges upon which, by operation of fingering, the
said additional tones or notes are respectively produced. The trumpets thus
constructed are, by reason of their multifarious sounds, styled
''polyphonian trumpets''
'.11
Close's inventions have not been sufficiently acknowledged in the
history of music. Apart from the successful patents, his only advertisement
was the word Polyphonian on the shop door of Thomas Percival, his supporter
and instrument-maker in London (to whom the dying Close sold his patents). On
19 August 1812 Percival wrote to Close in Dalton that 'numbers of people
enquire the meaning of POLYPHONIAN upon my DOOR PLATE, it is cut in Old
English, and what from the word itself and the manner of Engraving, many spell
a long time at
it'.4
The era of Polyphonian instruments lasted only some eight years. In 1818
valves were invented in
Germany,12
replacing the keyed finger holes. However, Close deserves credit for his
contribution to the brass instruments of today which allow the musician to
play a homogeneous chromatic scale of four octaves.
|
INDELIBLE INK
|
|---|
William Close experimented with various substances to make indelible
inks,
both black and red. Because the inks available in his
day did not produce a
permanent written text the 'testimony
of writing', as he described
it, could be lost, erased or defaced
by exposure to humidity, or fading, or
particularly by the deliberate
use of 'oxigenated muriatic acids'
[hypochlorite bleach]. He
wrote that, since the invention of printing, there
was less
need for indelible ink but that, particularly in the case of
individual
texts and legal documents, permanent ink was needed to preserve
'the
transactions of the day, and to ratify the affairs of the
future'.
13
The ink of his time was made by the addition of ferrous sulphate and gum or
sugar to an infusion of oak galls. After experimenting with various substances
he devised the following recipe for indelible black ink:
'Take of oil of lavender, 200 grs. copal in power, 25 grs, lamp black
from 2
to 3 grs with the assistance of a gentle heat, dissolve the
copal in the oil of lavender in a small glass phial, and then mix the lamp
black with the solution upon a marble slab... put the composition into a
bottle, and keep it excluded from the
air'.13
His indelible red ink was coloured with 'red sulphuret of
mercury'. Copal is the dried and crystalline resin from any one of four
or five genera of South American tree, including Bursera copal. A
letter in reply to Close's article questioned the indelibility if the
writing 'was washed with camphorated
spirits'14 but
there exists no report of any such experiment being made either by Close or by
others.
|
HISTORIAN
|
|---|
In addition to his inventive pursuits Close evinced a passion
to record,
describe and interpret local features of prehistoric,
archaeological and
contemporary significance. At age 30 he published
a new edition of
West's Antiquities of
Furness,
3,4
and his personal
research in the local
History, Topography and Archaeology
of Furness4
extended over the first eight years of his life in
Dalton. An 86-page
supplement to
Antiquities of Furness contains
articles on local
archaeology, botany and geology, accounts
of the architecture of Walton Castle
and Furness Abbey, descriptions
of the wells of Northscale Walney and
explanations for their
'alternating water springs' and an account of
the prehistoric
Ella Barrow at Pennington. He wrote about the ancient church
bells
and stained glass in Dalton Church, about local villages and
their
people, about buildings including those of Gleaston, Coniston,
Pennington and
the two Urswick villages, and about farming practices
and unique local
farmers' tools including the 'Furness sickle'
and the
'Furness indented swingle
tree';
4 a
swingle-tree is
the crosspiece of a carriage or plough to which the traces of
harnessed
horses are fixed. Close also analysed 250 years of births, deaths
and
marriages recorded in the Dalton Parish Church registers, with
special
attention to the plague in Dalton from 1631 to 1632
during which
545
4 of the 2000 in
the parish died.
15
As lately
as 1772 smallpox (which Close had eliminated from the region
in
1799) had killed as many as 41 residents.
During the last 10 years of his life, Close prepared a manuscript entitled
Itinerary of Furness and the Environs which, had not the author died
so young, would have been as widely known as West's Guide to the
Lakes. The manuscript provides brief information about all the towns and
villages within 21 miles of Ulverston, 'containing the distances... with
notices of County Seats, picturesque scenery and all objects meriting
attention... and much information dealing with the manners and customs of the
inhabitants; with copies of title deeds and letters of historical
significance'.4
This work, together with his interest in indelible inks, reflects Close's
perceived responsibility to record for posterity that which otherwise would be
lost forever.
|
HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING
|
|---|
Close saw pragmatic engineering challenges in the industrial
and municipal
world in which he lived. Aged 29, in 1804 he addressed
the engineering problem
of air leaking into industrial condensers
and into water-holding reservoirs
and siphons. He solved it
by means of a double-encasing water-filled
container-jacket
that 'unless the workmanship be very bad' gives an
airtight
seal.
16
Walney Island where he had grown up, and the Furness peninsula of which it
is a part, is a water-oriented society. The new doctor became interested in
hydraulic engineering and what today would be called fluid mechanics. In his
paper Observations on the practicability and expense of recovering land
from the sea at Walney Channel he proposed damming Walney Channel, for
the funding of which he presented a detailed business plan 'with a clear
gain of
£72,000'.4
The local landowners did not support the proposal.
Dalton is situated upon a dry eminence of limestone, and water springs in
the neighbourhood were not easily accessed: 'the inhabitants experience
considerable fatigue and inconvenience in providing the quantity of water
which is indispensably necessary for culinary and domestic purposes'.
Close responded to this challenge by inventing several pumping devices, the
details of which he published between 1801 and
1805.17-22
His first hydraulic engine was a modification of an earlier device designed by
Goodwin.23 His
final engine, working on a siphon principle and with a complex system of
leather valves, used air entrained from water moving in this siphon
(Figure 1). He built a working
prototype in Dalton, and raised water '12 feet above the cistern at the
rate of 20 pints per hour'.
|
CONCLUSION
|
|---|
In 1811, aged 36 years, Close started coughing blood. Tuberculosis
was
diagnosed and he died two years later at the height of his
inventive powers.
He was buried, at his own request, at Walney
in a spot of ground upon which he
had often played when a
boy,
3,4
in
a grave which he specified should be nine-feet deep and without
a
headstone. After his death his widow allowed many of his papers
to be
dispersed or
destroyed.
4
It is surprising that William Close and his inventions have been so little
acknowledged. One reason perhaps was the remoteness of the region in which he
lived. His biographer, Harper Gaythorpe, opined that the absence of any
national acknowledgement of Close's work 'may have arisen from the
fact that even today [1903] the geographical position of the Furness district
seems to be still imperfectly
known'.4
Another possible reason for neglect was that his polymath interests did not
allow him to be 'compartmentalized' or stereotyped in either popular
or professional terms. He was said to have attempted too much, and 'had
he devoted more time to perfecting some one branch of work, his fame
would have been more widely
known'.4 He was
a humble yet extraordinary man.
|
Acknowledgments
|
|---|
We thank Mrs Lynne Packer of the University of Queensland for
much
help.
|
REFERENCES
|
|---|
- King-Hele D. The Essential Writings of Erasmus
Darwin. London: MacGibbon & Kee,1968
- Pearn JH. Professor Herman Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz
1821-1894. In: A Doctor in the Garden. Brisbane:
Amphion Press, 2002: 184-5
- Anonymous. Obituary: with Anecdotes of Remarkable Persons. Mr Wm.
Close, surgeon and apothecary. Gentleman's
Magazine 1813;83:298
- Gaythorpe H. William Close: surgeon, apothecary, historian,
musician of Dalton-in-Furness. Barrow Naturalists' Field Club
Annual Rep 1909;17:1
-15
- Buchanan RA. Industrial Archaeology in
Britain. London: Book Club Associates1971
- Close W. On the Lamp for Tallow, and the Combustion of that
Material. Nicholson's J1799; 3:547
-8
- Close W. [On Improved Methods for Blasting Rocks].
West's Antiquities of Furness. Furness: G.
Ashburner, 1804: 393
- Close W. Observations on blasting Rocks; with an Account of an
Improvement, whereby the Danger of accidental Explosion is in a great Measure
obviated. Nicholson's J1805; 12:171
-4
- Close W. Account of the Art and Instrument used for boring and
blasting Rocks; with Improvements. Nicholson's J1806; 13:192
-6
- Close W. Observations on the Defects of the Trumpet,
Bugle and French Horn, and the Extensions of their Musical
Powers. Furness, 1812
- UK Patent Office. Rolls Chapel Reports. 8th Report. Abridgement of
the Specification of Patent No. 3505. [William Close of Dalton] for
'Improvements on trumpets of different denominations, namely, the treble
or common trumpet the French horn or tenor trumpet, and the bugle horn: p.92
- Baines A. The later brass. In: Musical Instruments
Through the Ages. London: Penguin Books, 1969:306
-8
- Close W. Composition of Writing Ink, possessing the permanent
Colour, and other essential Properties, of the Ink used for Printing.
Nicholson's J1802; 11:145
-50
- Sheldrake T. On the preparation of indelible ink.
Nicholson's J1802; 11:237
-8
- The Gaythorpe Collection in Barrow Library, Barrow-in-Furness
[www.dalton-in-furness.org.uk/dalton-online/history]
- Close W. On the Combinations for supplying Worm Tubs with Cold
Water, by the Syphon, with an easy Method of securing the Joints of such
Hydraulic Apparatus against the Admission of the External Air.
Nicholson's J1801; 7:191
-2
- Close W. Description of an Engine for raising water by the lateral
motion of a stream of water through a conical tube.
Nicholson's J1801; 4:293
-8; 493-5
- Close W. New application of the Syphon to raise water above the
surface of the reservoir. Nicholson's J1801; 4:547
-50; 1802;5:22-3
- Close W. Construction of an hydraulic apparatus, which by means of
the Syphon raises water above its level, and performs its alterations without
attendance. Nicholson's J1802; 1:27
-32
- Close W. Concerning the Engine for raising Water by the lateral
Communication of Motion. Nicholson's J1801; 4:493
-5
- Close W. Construction of an Hydraulic Apparatus, which by means of
the Syphon raises Water above its Level, and performs its alterations without
attendance. Nicholson's J1802; 1:27
-32
- Close W. Description and effects of an Apparatus for raising Water
by means of air condensed in its descent through an inverted Syphon.
Nicholson's J1805; 12:16
-28
- Boswell JW. Improvements in the Hydraulic Engine of Schemnitz, and
that of Mr. Goodwyn; with comparative Remarks on the most useful Applications
of each, and some Facts relative to the Invention of the pressure Engine.
Nicholson's J1802; 2:2
-6
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INTRODUCTION
PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL LIFE
