Humphry Davy its potential anaesthetic properties in relieving pain during surgery. Berzelius called Davy's 1806 Bakerian Lecture "On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity" "one of the best memoirs which has ever enriched the theory of chemistry." Davy was a baronet, President of the Royal Society (PRS), Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA), and Fellow of the Geological Society (FGS). He also invented the Davy lamp and a very early form of arc lamp. He joked that his assistant Michael Faraday was his greatest discovery. Davy was born in Penzance, Cornwall in England on 17 December 1778. Davy's brother, John Davy, writes
Edmund Davy 1790 - 24 Jan 1868) also was a chemist who spent some time (1808–1811) assisting Humphry in his chemistry research at the Royal Institution. John was the first to prepare and name phosgene gas. Edmund William Davy (born in 1826), son of Edmund Davy, became professor of medicine in the Royal College, Dublin, in 1870. That they cooperated in research is shown in a notice to the Royal Irish Academy on the manufacture of sulphuric acid which Edmund Davy ends with an acknowledgement of the assistance he received in his experiments given by his son, Edmund William Davy. Edmund Davy