1819.] History and Present State of Galvanism. 133 



present century. For the first 12 years of that century, it was 

 cultivated with indefatigable industry in almost every country of 

 Europe. The result was a most important augmentation of 

 chemical facts and the development of a new agent of almost 

 unlimited power by which chemical decompositions might be 

 brought about. Some addition has also been made to our elec- 

 trical knowledge, though this department, as indeed might have 

 been anticipated, has neither received so important nor so bril- 

 liant an increase as the chemical. The harvest has been already 

 in some measure reaped ; and the most active of the labourers 

 have in a great measure left the field. A pause has ensued in 

 the progress of galvanic discovery. The facts require classifica- 

 tion and generalization. Whoever shall succeed in introducing 

 a striking improvement in the theory will in all probability occa- 

 sion a new stimulus to the activity of experimentalists, and give 

 rise to the discovery of a new series of important facts. 



At such a season as the present, a clear and candid history of 

 galvanism cannot but be of considerable value. It will save the 

 future theorist considerable trouble, by laying the facts before 

 him within a short compass, and by pointing out the sources 

 whence the requisite information on every branch of the subject 

 may be obtained. The work before us deserves great praise as 

 an historical sketch. It is written with much perspicuity, 

 with unimpeachable candour ; the accuracy where papers are 

 referred to, written in the English or French language, is faultless, 

 but the account of papers which have been published only in the 

 German language is much less complete. Several very import- 

 ant papers are not noticed at all ; and it is pretty obvious that 

 the author has not had an opportunity of perusing others in the 

 original language, but that he has been obliged to satisfy himself 

 with the imperfect and garbled extracts which have occasionally 

 appeared in the French periodical works. I allude particularly 

 to the papers of Ritter, one of the most active experimenters, 

 and, perhaps, the most bulky writer on galvanism that has 

 hitherto appeared. He was a man of real genius, of the most 

 extraordinary activity of mind, and the most unbounded ambi- 

 tion. This, together with his extreme youth, for he died at the 

 age of 34, was the cause of the different extravagant doctrines 

 which he from time to time advanced, and the inaccurate experi- 

 ments by which these opinions were supported. Had he lived to 

 a more mature age, he would have shaken off all these absurdi- 

 ties, and appeared in a light more befitting his genius and his 

 industry ; but with all these defects, his services were uncom- 

 monly great, and galvanism is indebted to him for a great deal 

 which has been ascribed to subsequent writers. For this injus- 

 tice, Ritter has in some measure to thank the obscurity of his 

 writings and that mystical metaphysics with which they are 

 interspersed. If any person who has studied Ritter's writings 

 were to give us a simple statement of his experiments and 



