1 6 HANDBOOK OF PHYSIOLOGY -^ NEUROPHYSIOLOGY I 



FIG. lo. The experiment of electrifying a boy, from the French translation of the book by F. H. 

 VVinckler (Professor of Greek and Latin at Leipzig) entitled, Essai sur la Nature. Les ejjets el les causes 

 avec description de deux nouvelles machines a Eleclricite. Paris: Jorry, 1748. (Photographed from the 

 copy in the Wheatland collection by kind permission of Mr. David Wheatland.) 



vw,. I I. \ an Mnsschciiljroek and a Leyden jar. The portrait 

 is from the oil painting by J. M. Quinkhard which hangs in the 

 Museum of the History of Science in Leiden. The jar is an 

 early one, rather large in size, also from the same museum, 

 by the courtesy of which these photographs are reproduced. 



not until the development of the Leyden jar by Petrus 

 van Musschenbroek, Professor of Physics in Leiden, 

 that physiologists gained a much more stable and 

 powerful source of electricity. 



van Musschenbroek, striving to conserve elec- 

 tricity in a conductor and to delay the loss of its 

 charge in air, attempted to use water as the con- 

 ductor, insulating it from air in a nonconducting glass 

 jar. However, when he charged the water through a 

 wire leading from an electrical machine, he found the 

 electricity dissipated as quickly as e\er. His assistant, 

 Andreas Cuneus, while holding a jar containing 

 charged water, accidentally touched the inserted wire 

 with his other hand and got a frightening shock. W'ith 

 one hand he had formed one 'plate,' the charged 

 water being the other, and the glass jar the inter- 

 \ening dielectric. A condenser was born. On touching 

 the wire with his other hand he had shorted this 

 condenser through his body giving himself such a 

 jolt that he thought "his end had come" Q]i). van 

 Musschenbroek wrote to Reamur describing a similar 

 experience. Storage of electricity had now become 

 pos.sible and in fact had been achieved independently 

 by almost the same means (an electrified nail dipping 

 into a vial containing liquid) by von Kleist (72) of 



71. Quoted in J. -A. Nollet. Metnoire de l' Academic Royale de 

 Sciences. Paris, 1746, p. 1-25. 



72. VON Kleist, Ewald Juroen (d. 1748). Letter to J. G. 

 Kriigcr, quoted in Geschichte der Erde Halle 1746, p. 177; 

 and letter to Winkler (J. H. Winkler. Die Eigenschaften 

 der electrischen Materie und des electrischen Feuers. Leipzig, 

 ■ 745)- 



