ARCHER, EDWARD (1718–1789), physician, was born in Southwark, studied medicine in Edinburgh and afterwards in Leyden, where he graduated M.D. in 1746 with an inaugural dissertation, 'De Rheumatismo.' In 1747 he was elected physician to the Small-pox Hospital, which had just then been founded, and for the remainder of his life devoted the greater part of his thought and activity to the welfare of this institution and to the study and cure of the small-pox. This institution formed originally two establishments, viz. 'The Hospital for the Small-pox' and 'The Hospital for Inoculation,' and was founded chiefly to give the poor the advantages of the practice of inoculation, which had been previously an expensive operation and almost confined to the rich. Dr. Archer was a steady advocate and practiser of inoculation, and died some years before the introduction of vaccination which was destined to supersede it. He does not appear to have written any separate work on that or any other subject, but an account of the Small-pox Hospital, and, incidentally, of Dr. Archer's practice there, is given in a report by a Dr. Schultz, made to the Swedish government ('An Account of Inoculation, presented to the Royal Commissioners of Health in Sweden, by David Schultz, M.D., who attended the Small-pox Hospital in London near a twelvemonth; translated from the Swedish, London, 1758'), to which Dr. Archer prefixed a commendatory letter. Dr. Archer also wrote a very short note on the subject in the 'Journal Britannique' for 1755 (xviii. 485. La Haye, 1755). He is described as having been a 'humane, judicious, and learned physician, and an accomplished classical scholar.' Being possessed of a private fortune, and unambitious, he was never very busily or profitably engaged in practice. When attacked by his last and fatal illness. Dr. Archer gave a singular and almost unparalleled proof of his interest in the Small-pox Hospital by expressing a wish to die within its walls, whither he was accordingly removed. He ended his life 28 March 1789, in the institution which he had served so well for forty-two years, and the success of which was mainly attributed to his zeal and energy. His portrait, by Pine, is in the board-room of the hospital.
[Gent. Mag. 1789, part i. 373; Munk's Roll of College of Physicians, ii. 182.]
ARCHER, FREDERICK SCOTT (1813–1857), inventor of the collodion process in photography, was the second son of a butcher at Bishop Stortford, and was, as a young man, assistant to a silversmith, Massey, in Leadenhall Street. Showing some talent for sculpture, he was enabled, by the kindness of friends, to start in business as a sculptor, and it was a desire to obtain reproductions of his works that led him to take up the then recently discovered art of photography. Like many other photographers of the time, he made experiments with the view of obtaining a more suitable vehicle for the sensitive silver salt than the waxed paper principally employed. In 1846 Schönbein discovered gun-cotton; in 1847, Maynard, of Boston, prepared collodion, an ethereal solution of gun-cotton, for surgical purposes. In 1850 Archer successfully applied collodion to photography by adding an iodide to the collodion and immersing the glass plate with the film upon it while wet in the solution of nitrate of silver. The first account of the process was published in the 'Chemist,' March 1851. Archer does not seem to have been the first to suggest this application of collodion, but there appears no doubt whatever that he was the first to carry it into effect. He did not patent the invention, possibly because he did not realise its value, though he patented a development of no practical value in 1855 (Patent No. 1914). The process was at first only employed for producing 'positives,' and it was not for some time that it was found to be even more suitable for making 'negatives' from which any number of positive pictures can be obtained. Archer's original process, with certain improvements in the method of 'development' suggested by others soon after its publication, remained until quite recently without a rival, and it is only within the last two or three years that it has given way to the modern 'gelatine' process. Archer himself, soon after his discovery, left his house in Henrietta Street, and went to live in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, where he practised, with no great success, as a photographer. Here he produced several other inventions. Of these the more important were a camera, in which the various processes for producing a photographic picture could be carried on; and a 'liquid lens,' that is a lens with glass surfaces of suitable shape, and filled with liquid; though with regard to this invention he can make no claim to originality, such lenses having been patented for telescopes, as long ago as 1785, by a naval officer named Robert Blair. He is also said to have been the first to use a 'triplet' lens, a form of lens very popular until it was superseded by recent improvements. He died in May 1857, and was buried in Kensal Green. A subscription was started for his widow, but as she died in the following year the
