Sir Francis Bacon (1st Viscount of St Albans), philosopher, jurist, statesman, author and scientist was born January 22nd, 1561 at York House in London.
Once an adult, he was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I as well as being a close advisor to the Earl of Essex.
One of his biographers, the historian William Hepworth Dixon, states: “Bacon’s influence in the modern world is so great that every man who rides in a train, sends a telegram, follows a steam plough, sits in an easy chair, crosses the channel or the Atlantic, eats a good dinner, enjoys a beautiful garden, or undergoes a painless surgical operation, owes him something.”
I understand that ole Frank was granted a knighthood in 1603. In 1618 he was appointed Lord Chancellor. Subsequently he was accused of twenty-three separate counts of corruption and then thrown out of office. He turned his attention to philosophy of science. Safer place to dally.
In this field, he made a big deal of experimentation, the gathering of data and the analysis thereof. Here’s my favorite episode.
In 1626 at the age of 65, Francis Bacon performed a quite interesting experiment. He wanted to prove that cold had a preservative quality on organic tissue: fresh meat could be preserved if frozen. His experimental method? He stuffed a chicken full of snow.
After the chicken had been partially plucked, Bacon placed it in a bag, packed snow around it and buried the carcass. “Unfortunately,” according to John Aubrey, biographer and source of a detailed account of Sir Francis Bacon’s death, Bacon caught a severe chill and was so ill he was unable make the distance to his own lodgings and instead was taken to the Earl of Arundel’s house at Highgate, where they put him into a good bed warmed with a pan, but it was a damp bed that had not been laid-in for a year before, which gave him such a cold that in two or three days, as I remember Mr Hobbes told me, he died of suffocation.”
Think about this the next time you sit down for breakfast. The chicken lasted longer than the Bacon.
Death and frozen chicken?
Against cold meats was he insured?
For frozen chickens he procured —
brought on the illness he endured,
and never was this Bacon cured.
Cannot find the author of this masterpiece.
Pond Square is believed to be the site of Bacon’s chicken experiment. Somehow it developed a reputation for being haunted, not by Sir Francis Bacon but by a ghostly chicken.
A Poultrygeist?