Author Archive

I was an 18thcentury Irish army surgeon. I was dismissed in 1808 for dueling. I was on the Bellerophon when Napoleon came on board and accompanied him as a private physician to St Helena. I took part in the ex-French emperor’s squabbles with Sir Hudson Lowe and was forced to resign in 1818. A letter I wrote…

While China is credited for a whole range of discoveries before the West, it was overtaken in technological terms by Europe during the Scientific Revolution (c.16th-18th century). Arguably, what was the reason for this?