William Thornton Re-examined by Bob Arnebeck

  The Doctor Examined, or Why William Thornton Did Not Design the Octagon House or the Capitol by Bob Arnebeck Table of Contents Chapter Twelve: On the heights of Mount Chimborazo Capitol in 1800 In a brief memoir about her husband written just after his death in 1828, Mrs. Thornton regretted his embracing "a greater variety of sciences" because it prevented him from attaining what he truly wanted. She credited him for genius in many fields - "philosophy, politics, Finance, astronomy, medicine, Botany, Poetry, painting, religion, agriculture, in short all subjects by turns occupied his active and indefatigable mind." She concluded that "had his genius been confined to fewer subjects, had he concentrated his study in some particular science, he would have attained Celebrity."(1)   Actually, beginning in 1802, Thornton's genius was confined by bureaucracy, and he attained celebrity. He vexed patent applicants by claiming a free speech right to a...