James Woodhouse (17 November 1770 in Philadelphia – 4 June 1809 in Philadelphia) was an American surgeon and chemist.
Biography He was the son of English emigrants to the British America. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1787, and from its medical department in 1792. In 1791 he served as a surgeon in General Arthur St. Clair's expedition against the Native American in the North West Territory. When Joseph Priestley declined to accept the chair of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania in 1795, Woodhouse received the appointment, which he held until his death. He is said to have been the first to demonstrate the superiority of the Lehigh anthracite coal in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, over the bituminous coals of Virginia for intensity and regularity of heating power. He also studied potassium, nitrous oxide, identification of basalt, starch and bread making. He was a member of the American Philosophical Society, and contributed to its transactions, to Samuel L. Mitchell's Medical Repository, and to John R. Coxe's Medical Museum.
Publications Dissertation on the Chemical and Medical Properties of the Persimmon-Tree (1792) Observations on the Combinations of Acids, Bitters, and Astringents (1793) Answer to Dr. J. Priestley's Considerations on the Doctrine of Phlogiston and the Decomposition of Water (1794) Young Chemist's Pocket-Companion (1797) Experiments and Observations in the Vegetation of Plants (1802) He edited:
Parkinson, Chemical Pocket-Book (Philadelphia, 1802) Chaptal, Elements of Chemistry (4th ed., 2 vols., 1807)
Notes
References This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gallatin, Albert H. (1889). "Woodhouse, James" . In Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J. (eds.). Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton.
Further reading Smith, Edgar Fahs (1918). James Woodhouse, a pioneer in chemistry, 1770-1809. Philadelphia, The John C. Winston company.
