After Davy's father died in 1794, Tonkin apprenticed him to John Bingham Borlase, a surgeon with a practice in Penzance. While becoming a chemist in the apothecary's dispensary, he began conducting his earliest experiments at home, much to the annoyance of his friends and family. His older sister, for instance, complained his corrosive substances were destroying her dresses, and at least one friend thought it likely the "incorrigible" Davy would eventually "blow us all into the air." In 1797, after he learned French from a refuge priest, Davy read Lavoisier's "Traité élémentaire de chimie." This exposure influenced much of his future work, which can be seen as reaction against Lavoisier's work and the dominance of French chemists.