Francis Bacon | A Handy Book of Curious Information
“Cold Storage. Macaulay has familiarized us with the fact that Francis Bacon died a victim to science in what may have been the first experiment in cold storage. At the end of March, 1626, being near Highgate on a snowy day, he left his coach to collect snow, with which he meant to stuff a fowl in order to observe the effect of cold on the preservation of its flesh. In so doing he caught a chill, and took refuge in Lord Arundel's house, where, on April 9, he died of the disease now known as bronchitis. Macaulay adds, "In the last letter that he ever wrote, with fingers which, as he said, could not steadily hold a pen, he did not omit to mention that the experiment of the snow had succeeded excellently well."
On December 11, 1663, Samuel Pepys made this entry in his diary : " Fowl killed in December, Alderman Barker said, he did buy, and, putting into the box under his sledge, did forget to take them out to eat till April next, and they then were found there, and were, through the frost, as sweet and fresh and eat as well as at first killed."
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“Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was one of the leading figures in natural philosophy and in the field of scientific methodology in the period of transition from the Renaissance to the early modern era. As a lawyer, member of Parliament, and Queen's Counsel, Bacon wrote on questions of law, state and religion, as well as on contemporary politics; but he also published texts in which he speculated on possible conceptions of society, and he pondered questions of ethics (Essays) even in his works on natural philosophy (The Advancement of Learning).
Portrait of Francis Bacon (1617). Paul van Somer I, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
“I humbly pray … that knowledge being now discharged of that venom which the serpent infused into it, and which makes the mind of man to swell, we may not be wise above measure and sobriety, but cultivate truth in charity…. Lastly, I would address one general admonition to all; that they consider what are the true ends of knowledge, and that they seek it not either for pleasure of the mind, or for contention, or for superiority to others, or for profit, or fame, or power, or any of these inferior things; but for the benefit and use of life; and that they perfect and govern it in charity. For it was from the lust of power that the angels fell, from lust of knowledge that man fell; but of charity there can be no excess, neither did angel or man ever come in danger by it (Bacon IV [1901], 20f.: Instauratio Magna, Preface).”