HUMPHREY DAVY AND JACOB BERZELIUS 189 



but in other respects also they belong to the most eminent 

 minds of their time. The fact that the electric current, when 

 led through aqueous liquids, produces decomposition and 

 develops the two gaseous components of water, hydrogen and 

 oxygen, though in itself highly novel and wonderful, could 

 not fail to be discovered as soon as anyone had set up the 

 pile, and dipped its two end wires into ordinary water. It 

 thus soon became known that an appliance of undreamed-of 

 power in chemical investigation was here available. Not 

 long previously, the decomposition of water in red-hot iron 

 tubes had been studied, and it was found that a very high 

 temperature was necessary for this, whereas by means of 

 Volta's pile, the decomposition took place straight away, as 

 it were by itself, and the two components were cleanly 

 separated. But the easier these new effects were to observe, 

 the more unsatisfactory were the experiments which were 

 now quickly published in large numbers. Water supposed 

 to be pure was said to have been decomposed by the current 

 into acids and bases of various kinds, which were indicated 

 at the two end wires by litmus, and a maze of contradictions 

 came into existence. Davy was the first to clear the matter 

 up by a large number of experiments designed to give clear 

 results, and Berzelius soon followed him in the matter. 



They showed that the acids and bases only arise from im- 

 purities in the water, and that electrical decomposition does 

 not produce any new components, but only the components 

 of water already known, hydrogen and oxygen. An aston- 

 ishing fact, and one most misleading, was that two quantities 

 of water could be taken in separate vessels, in each of which 

 one of the wires from the pile dipped, the two being only 

 connected through a moist wick or the like, and that then one 

 lot of water only gave hydrogen, and the other only oxygen. 

 But neither Davy nor Berzelius allowed themselves to be 

 daunted by the difficulty of understanding this phenomenon, 

 which as a matter of fact was only thoroughly explained 



