KINNERSLEY' s LECTURES. 585 



saw any advantage after the fifth day, when the patients 

 "became discouraged, went home, and in a short time re- 

 lapsed." In fact, Franklin is not disposed to accord to his 

 shocks even the first small improvement which appeared ; 

 which he thinks rather due to the "exercise in the 

 patients' journey and coining daily to my house, or from 

 the spirits given by the hope of success enabling them to 

 exert more strength in their limbs." 1 



By this time he determines that something must be 

 done to assuage popular curiosity in a more wholesale 

 manner. Kinnersley, who had been assisting him in his 

 experiments, needed remunerative employment. He was 

 well familiar with all Franklin had accomplished. The 

 plan developed is told in the following advertisement 

 which soon appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette: 



"Notice is hereby given to the Curious that on Wednes- 

 day next, Mr. Kinnersley proposes to begin a course of 

 Experiments on the Newly Discovered Electrical Fire, 

 containing not only the most curious of those that have 

 been made and published in Europe, but a considerable 

 number of new ones lately made in this City, to be accom- 

 panied with methodical lectures on the nature and proper- 

 ties of that wonderful element." 



There were two of these discourses which Franklin had 

 written. Kinnersley himself fitted up the apparatus with 

 characteristic ingenuity, and thus equipped, the first lec- 

 turer on science in the New World began his tour. From 

 Philadelphia he went to Boston, where the venerable walls 

 of Faneuil Hall resounded with the cracks and snaps of 

 his jars and globes, long before they echoed the impas- 

 sioned eloquence of the orators of the Revolution. His 

 experiments, writes Governor Bowdoin to Franklin, "have 

 been greatly pleasing to all sorts of people that have seen 

 them." In New York and in Newport the exhibitions 

 created a genuine sensation the citizens especially mar- 

 better to Priugle, Dec. 21, 1757. 



