584 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



he saw no reason why he should not issue it as a separate 

 publication price two shillings and six pence; especially 

 as no outlay on his part was required, and all the revenue 

 was to come solely to him. Thus the collection came to 

 be published in 1751. 



Meanwhile Franklin was pursuing the even tenor of his 

 way, and not only all the Philadelphians, but the people 

 of far-distant Boston and New York and Charles Town 

 were manifesting increased interest in his astonishing 

 proceedings. Cadwallader Golden, in New York, had 

 opened correspondence with him and had become prac- 

 tically his disciple; so had James Bowdoin, in Boston, 

 afterwards Governor of the colony. If his house had 

 hitherto been a rendezvous for all the sight-seers in Phila- 

 delphia, it was now more attractive than ever. He killed 

 turkeys with the discharge from large Leyden jars, and 

 once, by accident, in the same way, nearly killed himself. 

 To Golden he writes that he has "melted brass pins and 

 needles, inverted the poles of the magnetic needle, given 

 a magnetism and polarity to needles that had none, and 

 fired dry gunpowder by the electric spark." He dwells 

 upon the powerful effects of the L,eyden jar battery, and 

 adds: "So we are got beyond the skill of Rabelais' devils 

 of two years old, who . . . had only learned to thunder 

 and lighten a little round the head of a cabbage." Then 

 people got the notion, probably from news of some curious 

 discoveries said to have been made in Italy, that electricity 

 was the universal panacea; and Franklin found himself 

 besieged by invalids. Governor Belcher, of New Jersey 

 (aged 70, drinks small beer and half a bottle of Madeira 

 daily, and is "tremulous"), begs Franklin to send him 

 the electrical apparatus in order that he may treat himself, 

 and bewails its breakage on the road. 1 Paralytics come to 

 him in large numbers, and he gave them all the same 

 remedy the united shock of two six-gallon glass jars 

 through the affected 'limb, three times a day; but he never 



N. Y. Col. Records, viii., 7. 



