Society of Antiquaries. 181 
The excessive irritability, or rather sensibility, of the sto- 
mach, indeed, accounts for the instantancous and fatal effects 
ef poison, as a blow on that organ immediately destroys 
life, whilst the heart can support a wound for some days. 
All vegetable poisons, it appears, act by destroying the 
irritability * of the muscles, or the power of the muscular 
fibre. The word power he defined to be the appellation of 
an indefinable quality inherent in muscles, as magnetism in 
steel or electricity in the torpedo. This definition is per- 
haps worthy the attention of the northern professors who 
have said so much about the term power. 
Noy. 20. The president in the chair.—The reading of 
the Bakerian Lecture, “ On some chemical effects of Elec- 
tricity,” by H. Davy, Esq. commenced. The preliminary 
experiments related chiefly to the production of fixed alkali 
in water by means of a powerful Galvanic battery, having 
the positive and negative wires inserted in different inoxi- 
dizable vessels containing distilled water. From these ex- 
periments a very obvious, but very important, fact resulted ; 
namely, that even distilled water is never chemically pure, 
but that it still retains frequently both vegetable and animal 
matter combined or dissolved in it, and always nitrogen gas. 
or some salt. Hence, after reapeated experiments, he 
found that electricity did not generate fixed alkali, as sup- 
posed by Pacchiani, but only evolved it. “* Water,” observed 
Mr. D., ‘* when chemically pure (a state which at present 
searccly appears practicable by all our art), is decomposed 
by electricity, and resolved into pure oxygen and hydrogen.” 
We have to lament that this ingenious experimentalist, with 
such peculiar advantages, should still continue to opcrate 
on so small quantities as single ounces of water. 
SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES. 
This society also assembled after the vacation, on Thurs- 
day evening of the 6th November, the Rev. Dr. Hamilton, 
* Mr. P.’s experiments certainly do not prove that these poisons act by 
robbing the system of its necessary portion of oxygen, as supposed by some 
philosophers, 
M 3 vice. 
