roficient that he attracted to himself the attention of leading men
in medical circles. He was in Philadelphia, prosecuting his duties as
late as the year 1819. It is known that during this period he was
attached to the Northern Division of the Army.

In 1820 Dr. James Lovell, Surgeon General of the Army, suggested to
General Thayer, Superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point,
that Cutbush be appointed Chief Medical Officer at the Academy and
Post of West Point. In this capacity he served for seventeen months,
when he became Acting Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy in the
Academy. The first lecture in his new position was delivered October
9, 1820. In a sense, it marked the beginning of a new career for
Cutbush. He resumed teaching duties, but gave himself more
particularly to the study, not only of gunpowder, which never ceased
to be interesting to him, but to explosives of higher character, and
in this latter field he reached his greatest eminence and may
confidently be regarded as a pioneer in it.

Just before leaving Philadelphia, in the year 1820, Cutbush wrote
Benjamin Silliman at some length on an improvement of the Voltaic
electrical lamp. It was an ingenious modification and constituted the
first contribution made by Cutbush to the _American Journal of
Science_.

But, returning to his life at West Point, it may be observed that in
1822 he contributed his second article to the _Journal of Science_,
which did not appear in print, however, until 1824. This article
related to the composition and properties of the Chinese fire and the
so-called brilliant fires. It was very interesting. It displayed a
thorough and wide knowledge of pyrotechnics with which Cutbush, in
previous years, had been gradually familiarizing himself. At one point
he said:

"Most if not all the compositions used in fireworks,
including military fireworks, were more the result of the
labours of the artisan who was neither controlled by fixed
principles nor by a knowledge of the effects and properties
of bodies and of the systematic experiments of the chemist,
and yet in consequence of some fortuitous and repeated trials
we find that he has been successful, and moreover has amassed
a body of facts which we may reasonably infer may either be
rendered more perfect by knowledge or improved upon by the
exact aid of chemical science."

Here is every proof of his purpose to apply his understa