ABSTRACT
The "science of civic virtue" had as one of its two pillars the importance of science, especially chemistry, to the growth and expansion of the economy. The movement of the civic scientists in the direction of public health-sanitary chemistry was obviously spurred by the urban crisis and encouraged by government's first efforts to stem what was increasingly seen as an intolerable evil. Of the civic scientists, the one most devoted to the subject of sanitary chemistry—a field which he virtually created and in which he became a leading authority—was Robert Angus Smith. The cotton industry, the staple of Manchester, had long possessed a reputation for requiring chemists for its ancillary industries. The civic scientists, collectively had a dramatic effect upon the "ecology" of the scientific institutions which comprised the Manchester scientific community. On the macro-level, the small band of professionals provided a nucleus which drew others of similar mind and background to the city in search of a scientific career.
