THE LEYDEN JAR. 521 



Other letters from Leyden, especially from Allamand, 1 

 Van Musschenbroeck's colleague and assistant, soon 

 brought further details for the Professor's first communi- 

 cation was evidently written while he was still suffering 

 from the nervous prostration following the shock; and he 

 was doubtless entirely in earnest in his remark that he 

 would not undergo the experience again for the Crown of 

 France; although he did do so, and with even worse re- 

 sults than before. The observation was made by acci- 

 dent, Van Musschenbroeck's object, some say, being to 

 ascertain whether the charge on electrified bodies could 

 be prevented from dissipation by contact with water 

 others that he was examining the capacity of water for 

 receiving and propagating electricity. Allamand avers 

 that the shock deprived him of breath for some 'minutes ; 

 but the most important part of Allamand' s communication 

 to Nollet is his ascription of the credit of the actual dis- 

 covery to one Cunaeus, a scientific amateur, who, he says, 

 observed the effects while repeating at home certain ex- 

 periments which Van Musschenbroeck and Allamand had 

 shown him. The evidence, however, in support of 

 Cunseus, is not only weak, but in details contradictory, 

 and it seems safer to conclude with the Abbe de Mangin, 

 who, in his history written contemporaneously with the 

 event, declares that the claim for Cunseus is u a mere 

 stratagem devised "by -people envious of Musschenbroeck 

 for the purpose of depriving him of a part of the glory 

 which was justly due him" -pace, of course, Von Kleist. 

 At all events, whether originating with Van Musschen- 

 broeck or Cunseus, it is certain that the attention of the 

 world was first attracted to the discovery by the letter 

 which Musschenbroeck wrote and Nollet published; and, 

 as that information came from Leyden, the discovery be- 

 came known sometimes as the Musschenbroeckian, oftener 

 as the Leyden experiment, while the contrivance itself 



J Mem. de 1'Acad. Roy. des Sciences, 1746. 



