William Prout (1785-1850) was an English chemist, physicist, and physician known for his important research in the areas of physiology, meteorology, and chemistry. He studied the processes of digestion, respiration, and blood formation, the urinary system, urine, and urinary stones.
He also proposed the theory in which he stated that the atomic weight of an element is an integer multiple of the atomic weight of hydrogen, being known as the Prout hypothesis.
William Prout. From a miniature by Henry Wyndham Phillips, Prout improved the design of the barometer and the Royal Society of London adopted his new model as the national standard. He was elected to this institution in 1819, and in 1831 he delivered the Goulstonian Lecture at the Royal College of Physicians on the application of chemistry to medicine.
William Prout's work on the nature and treatment of diseases of the urinary organs increased his reputation and he was regarded as one of Britain's most distinguished physiological chemists.
Prout was very skeptical of chemical remedies, due to possible side effects, but suggested iodine treatment for goiter. He also emphasized that a healthy, balanced diet should include carbohydrates, fat, protein, and water. In 1824, he showed that the acid in gastric juice was hydrochloric acid.
Prout wrote the eighth Bridgewater Treatise, Chemistry, Meteorology, and the Function of Digestion, considered with reference to Natural Theology.
Likewise, he published some forty articles and five books, mainly in the different areas of physiology. Many of his books went through multiple editions and were for a long time considered reference textbooks.
Biography
Early years
William Prout was born in Horton, Gloucestershire on January 15, 1785. He was the eldest of the three children of John Prout and Hannah Limbrick, a humble family who were dedicated to agriculture.
She learned to read at the school in Wickwar, a neighboring town, as well as math at a charity school in Badminton, while helping her parents with farm chores. Thus, like many other humble-born physicians of the 19th century, Prout's early education was almost negligible.
At the age of 17, aware of his own educational deficiencies, he entered the Sherston Academy, a private institution run by the Reverend John Turner, where he learned Latin and Greek. In 1808, aged 23, he enrolled at the University of Edinburgh School of Medicine.
While studying there, he stayed with Dr Alexander Adam, Rector of Edinburgh Secondary School. Their affinity was such that in 1814 Prout would marry his daughter, Agnes Adam, with whom he had six children.
Career
After graduation, Prout moved to London, where he completed his practical training at St. Thomas's and Guy's Hospitals. In December 1812 he was licensed by the Royal College of Physicians and in May of the following year he was elected a member of the Medical Society. In the latter, he became a member of the Council from 1817 to 1819 and served twice as Vice President.
His professional life was developed in the field of medicine in London, but he also devoted himself to chemical research. He was an active worker in biological chemistry and performed many analyzes of the secretions of living organisms, which he believed were produced by the breakdown of body tissues.
In 1815, based on the tables of atomic weights that existed at the time, he formulated the anonymous hypothesis that the atomic weight of each element is an integer multiple of hydrogen.
He suggested that the hydrogen atom is the only truly fundamental particle and that the atoms of the other elements are made up of groupings of various numbers of hydrogen atoms.
Prout's entire life was marked by a deafness that affected him since childhood. This problem led him to professional and social isolation. His health worsened in the spring of 1850, apparently from lung problems. He died on April 9 of that year and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London.
Contributions
Urea analysis
In 1814 Prout announced an evening lecture course on animal chemistry at his home. The topics were respiration and urine chemistry. Prout subjected the urine to a systematic examination.
Prout's goal was to establish a coherent connection between the chemical processes of metabolism and excretion, as manifested in urine; as well as the changes observed in the clinical state of the patient.
In 1825, when the second edition of his book, now renamed An Inquiry Into the Nature and Treatment of Diabetes, Calculus, and Other Affections of The Urinary Organs, was discovered, most of our current knowledge of the composition of urinary stones.
Prout stated that in diabetes and some other diseases of the urine, there is sometimes very little urea present. Changes in color and appearance were observed, as well as some sediment, but no comprehensive microscopic examination was done.
Prout's book appeared in five editions and was renamed several times. Finally, it was published in 1848 as On the Nature and Treatment of Stomach and Renal Diseases; Being an Inquiry Into the Connexion of Diabetes, Calculus, and Other Affections of the Kidney and Bladder, with Indigestion.
Some contemporary critics criticized Prout for failing to examine and explain some of the theoretical issues involved in physiology. To avoid controversy, Prout resolved these points with strong conviction.
By the 1830s, the book had been almost universally adopted, but the omission of discoveries and advances made on the continent demonstrated its inability to keep up with new developments in chemistry and physiology; so it was soon replaced by other texts.
Prout hypothesis
Prout made the two hypotheses of integral atomic weights and the unit of matter. That is, the atomic weights of all chemical elements are whole number multiples of the atomic weight of hydrogen.
He suggested that hydrogen could be the primary matter from which all other elements were formed. This was expressed in two documents in the Annals of Philosophy (1815, 1816). They were titled The Relationship between Specific Gravities of Bodies in Their Gaseous State and Weights of Their Atoms.
The works dealt with the calculation of the specific gravities (relative densities) of the elements from the published data of other chemists. He derived an excellent value for hydrogen, which due to its light weight had been very difficult to accurately determine by experimentation.
This was perhaps his best known contribution to chemistry. It sparked interest and improvement in the determination of exact atomic weights and therefore in atomic theory, as well as in the search for a classification system for elements.
Although he initially published his hypothesis anonymously, he identified himself as the author when he discovered that his ideas had been accepted by the eminent chemist Thomas Thomson, founder of the Annals of Philosophy.
Although Prout's hypothesis was not confirmed by later more precise measurements of atomic weights, it was a fundamental insight into the structure of the atom. So in 1920, Ernest Rutherford chose the name of the newly discovered proton to, among other reasons, give credit to Prout.
Gastric acids
Gastric digestion had long been the subject of speculation and experimentation. In 1823, William Prout discovered that stomach juices contain hydrochloric acid, which can be separated from gastric juice by distillation.
His report, read before the Royal Society of London on December 11, 1823, was published early the following year. Just a month after the publication of Prout, hydrochloric acid was independently identified in gastric juice by a different method carried out by Friedrich Tiedemann and Leopold Gmelin.
They validated Prout for the discovery of hydrochloric acid, but they also claimed to have found butyric and acetic acid in gastric juice.
Plays
Prout published some forty articles and five books, mainly in the areas of physiology. Many of his books went through multiple editions and for quite some time were considered reference textbooks.
His first work beyond the doctoral thesis was published in 1812 and dealt with the sensations of taste and smell. In 1813, he published a long memoir on the amount of CO2 emitted by the lungs during respiration, at different times and under different conditions.
He developed his medical career as an expert in stomach and urological diseases, which made him a prestigious doctor in these areas. In 1821, he summarized his findings in his book An inquiry into the Nature and Treatment of Diabetes, Calculus and other Affections of the Urinary Organs. This work was later republished under the title On the Nature and Treatment of Stomach and Urinary Diseases.
On the other hand, Prout wrote the eighth Bridgewater Treatise, Chemistry, Meteorology and the Function of Digestion with Reference to Natural Theology which appeared in February 1834.
The first 1,000 copies sold out quickly and led to the publication of a second edition on June 7, 1834. A third edition, slightly modified, appeared in 1845. And the fourth edition appeared posthumously in 1855.
References
- Biography of William Prout (1785-1850). (2019). Taken from thebiography.us
- Copeman, W. (2019). William Prout, MD, FRS, Physician And Chemist (1785-1850) - Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London. Taken from royalsocietypublishing.org
- Rosenfeld, L. (2019). William Prout: Early 19th Century Physician-Chemist. Taken from clinchem.aaccjnls.org
- William Prout - British chemist. (2019). Taken from britannica.com
- Wisniak, J. (2019). William Prout. Taken from magazines.unam.mx