Humphry Davy Davy's laboratory assistant, Michael Faraday, went on to enhance Davy's work and would become the more famous and influential scientist. Davy is supposed to have even claimed Faraday as his greatest discovery. Davy later accused Faraday of plagiarism, however, causing Faraday (the first Fullerian Professor of Chemistry) to cease all research in electromagnetism until his mentor's death. Of a sanguine, somewhat irritable temperament, Davy displayed characteristic enthusiasm and energy in all his pursuits. As is shown by his verses and sometimes by his prose, his mind was highly imaginative; the poet Coleridge declared that if he "had not been the
Pneumatic Institution effects. Davy was to describe his work at the Institution in his "Researches, chemical and philosophical, chiefly concerning nitrous oxide, or dephlogisticated nitrous air, and its respiration" (London, Murray, 1800). This and other gases were administered, without charge, to willing subjects, particularly those with diseases considered to be incurable at the time. Although the initial aim had been to treat patients with tuberculosis, most of the patients treated suffered from some form of paralysis. James Watt supported the "Institution" because conventional methods had failed to help against his son's pulmonary tuberculosis (known as "consumption" at the time), which had previously