24 LOEWENFELD, Contributions to the History of Science. 



similar invention on the same principles had been made 

 by the great railwayman This illustration {Text-fig. \) 



THE COVER. 



IE LAMP. 



Textfo, 4. 



shows Stephenson's lamp which, though certainly giving 

 evidence of the same principles and invented before Davy's 

 lamp, is also certainly much less useful from a technical 

 point of view. 



The great work of Davy in introducing the use of the 

 electric current into chemistry has already been mentioned. 

 Considering the enormous influence which the discovery 

 of the galvanic current had on that period of chemistry to 

 which I have confined myself thus far, namely, the first 

 decades of the nineteenth century, a few documents 

 relating to this discovery will be worthy of attention. 



Galvani himself was utterly mistaken in the ex- 

 planation he tried to give. He sought for the source of 



