Royal Society. 39 



caught the attention of Count Rumford, and became the medium 

 of his invitation to the Royal Institution. 



At Clifton, Davy's thoughts were directed to a multiplicity of 

 suhjects, many having reference to the main object of Dr. Bed- 

 does's pursuit at that time,— the application of factitious airs or 

 gases to the purposes of medicine. In his system of therapeutics, 

 as in the subsequent theories of electro-chemistry, oxygen, the 

 supporter of combustion, held one extremity of the scale as a sti- 

 mulus, while inflammable gases occupied the other extremity, as 

 sedatives ; various combinations were tried. Carbonated hydrogen 

 was thought to be narcotic. Azote or nitrogen, in its simple 

 state appeared to be noxious only from the absence of oxygen ; 

 combined with that active principle, in what has since been named 

 a Deutoxide, it produced instantaneous suffocation. The prot- 

 oxide had indeed been made, and to a certain degree examined ; 

 but it was reserved for Davy to ascertain its exact proportions, 

 previously to the establishment of the atomic theory, and to mul- 

 tiply experiments on the medical qualities of an air supposed to 

 increase present action without inducing subsequent debility, and 

 to act rather by augmenting the power of receiving excitement, 

 the excitability, than in the usual mode of stimulus. The inge- 

 nuity of the chemist who investigated Gaseous Oxide remains upon 

 record, but the panacea has long since vanished into empty space. 

 Here Davy exercised himself, moreover, in one of the most 

 beautiful departments of analytical chemistry, and to which the 

 destructive operations of our predecessors were directly opposed — 

 the ascertaining proximate elements of organic substances. He 

 mainly in these researches separated and distinguished the prin- 

 ciple forming an insoluble compound with gelatine, from the gallic 

 acid, to which it is nearly allied. He ascertained its identity in 

 various vegetable bodies, and improved its application to the pur- 

 poses of manufacture. But the discoveries that will enroll his 

 name among those few destined to go down to the latest posterity, 

 were made in London and at the Royal Institution : — 



The metallizing the alkalies and the earths, which has opened 

 entirely new views into the material world, with reference to the 

 construction of the earth, of volcanic actions, and of the most 

 curious meteorological phaenomena. 



The ascertaining that galvanic action augments, reduces, or in- 

 verts all chemical affinities, so as to carry alkalies through acids, 

 and with a power of magic to transfer the constituent parts of a 

 compound body to the opposite poles of a galvanic pile. This 

 union of electricity with chemistry must for ever rank among the 

 most splendid of theoretical discoveries. It has disclosed views 

 entirely new of the most important energies of nature ; and when 

 the action of electro-chemistry shall have become, like extended 

 quantity, subject to rigorous calculation, and when the powers 

 of corpuscular attraction shall be thus placed within our reach, the 

 whole must be referred to the acumen of that mind which first de- 

 tected 



