Back to Priestley History Page
Back to UUCSV Home Page
Back to Part 10
Download a text file with the entire history
In 1801, Joseph Priestley made his third visit to Philadelphia and it was almost the end of him. He contracted pleurisy and fever and was so ill that friends thought he might not recover. He was treated by Dr. Rush who, as usual, bled him often and consequently delayed his recovery.
The visit was a disappointment in another respect in that he found the Unitarian Society he had helped to found was pretty well broken up. Many of the most influential members had died in the latest yellow fever epidemic and interest had waned.
One bright spot was that, in March, Jefferson assumed the Presidency and, at that time, he wrote to the invalid:
"Yours is one of the few lives precious to mankind, for the continuance of which every thinking man is solicitous. .....It is with heartfelt satisfaction that, in the first moments of my public action, I can hail you with welcome to our land, tender to you the homage of its respect and esteem, cover you under the protection of those laws which were made for the wise and the good like you..........science and honesty are replaced on their high ground and you, my dear Sir, as their great apostle, are on its pinnacle."
This message helped Priestley to recover and he returned to Northumberland and resumed his scientific and literary work. Sometime afterwards he wrote, in a letter to a friend:
"To me the administration of Mr. Jefferson is the cause of peculiar satisfaction, as I now, for the first time in my life find myself in any degree of favour with the government of this country...and I hope I shall die in the same pleasing situation."
He was pleased to find that a whole new generation of men---men like Dalton and Davy and others---- were making great strides in scientific discoveries. Priestley continued his experiments. He became interested in the new Voltaic pile and, in 1803, he experimented with algae to disprove Erasmus Darwin's theory of spontaneous generation.
His health never fully recovered from the effects of the fever, however, and he decided to devote most of the time remaining to him to the completion of his theological works, particularly his General History of the Christian Church. His son, Joseph Junior describes his health as a general weakness, constant indigestion, and a progressively severe difficulty in swallowing. Toward the end he subsisted entirely on liquids and puddings. He had lost some of his hearing and, in 1802, ordered an ear trumpet. In 1803 he was forced to use crutches for a time as a result of a severe injury to his hip from a fall.
In 1803 he made his last visit to Philadelphia but he did so reluctantly and only because his son and daughter-in-law were afraid to leave him behind. He preached to the Unitarian Society and the American Philosophical Society gave him a testimonial dinner. It was a short visit and, upon his return to Northumberland, he was finally forced to move into his library on the first floor to avoid the climb up the stairs. He continued to rise daily and shave and make his own fire and perform most of the daily chores until the very last few days.
In January, 1804 his symptoms worsened and, on February 6, 1804, after dictating some corrections to a manuscript to his son, Joseph, Jr., he died, at age 70, quite peacefully in his bed in his library.