CHAP. VII., 3.] 



ELECTRICITY. DAVY. 



169 



and Electricity was the subject of his earliest, and 

 also that of his happiest essays. He was a very able 

 chemist in the strictest sense of the word, although 

 his ardour and his rapidity of generalizing might seem 

 to unfit him, in some measure, for a pursuit which 

 requires such intense watchfulness with regard to mi- 

 nutiae, such patient weighings of fractions of a grain, 

 such frequent though easy calculations. To Caven- 

 dish and Dalton, his great contemporaries to whom 

 we may now add Wollaston these things were a 

 pleasure in themselves ; to Davy they must ever have 

 been irksome indispen sables to the discovery of truth. 

 But, in fact, Davy's discoveries were almost indepen- 

 dent of such quantitative details : Numerical rela- 

 tions, and harmony of proportion, did not affect his 

 mind with pleasure, which possibly was one reason 

 of his deficient appreciation of works of art, the 

 more remarkable from his poetic temperament. 

 Dalton's doctrine of atomic combinations was (as we 

 have seen) slowly and doubtfully received by him 

 whilst Wollaston perceived its truth instantaneously. 

 A keener relish for such relations might most natu- 

 rally have led Davy to an anticipation of Mr Fara- 

 day's notable discovery of the definite character of 

 electrical decomposition, and the coincidence of the 

 Electro-chemical proportions for different bodies with 

 their atomic weights. 



The early papers of Davy refer chiefly to Heat, 

 His first . JL f\ . f j . ,> . -i . 



papers, and Light, and Electricity. He was, in tact, a physicist 



sxperi- more than a chemist. Whilst yet a surgeon's ap- 

 nents on p ren ti c e at Penzance, he satisfied himself of the im- 

 materiality of heat, which he illustrated by some in- 

 genious experiments, in which, concurring unawares 

 with the conclusions of his future patron Rumford, 

 he laid one foundation of his promotion. Removed 

 to a sphere of really scientific activity at Clifton, 

 under Dr Beddoes, 1 he executed those striking re- 

 searches in pneumatic chemistry and the physiologi- 

 cal effects of breathing various gases which gave him 

 his first reputation ; researches so arduous and full of 

 risk as to require a chemist in the vigour of life, 

 and urged by an unextinguishable thirst for dis- 

 covery, to undertake them. Even his brilliant dis- 

 covery of the effects of inhaling nitrous oxide brought 

 no competitor into the field ; and the use of anaes- 

 thetics, which might naturally have followed the 

 greatest discovery (if we except, perhaps, that of 

 vaccination) for the relief of suffering humanity 

 made in any age was delayed for another generation. 

 But so it was in all his triumphs. He never seemed 

 to drain the cup of discovery. He quaffed only its 

 freshest part. He felt the impulse of an unlimited 

 command of resources. He carried on rapidly, and 



seemingly without order, several investigations at 

 once. As in conversation he is described as seem- 

 ing to know what one was going to say before utter- 

 ing it, he had the art of divining things complex 

 and obscure. Seizing on results, he left to others the 

 not-inconsiderable merit, as well as labour, of pur- 

 suing the details. Keenly alive as he was to the 

 value of fame, and the applause which his talents 

 soon obtained for him, he left enough of both for his 

 friends ; his contemporaries, as well as his successors, 

 were enabled to weave a chaplet from the laurels 

 which he had not stooped to gather. 



These remarks apply quite as strongly to his dis- (762.) 

 coveries in the laws and facts of electro-chemical de- Rem ved 

 composition those on which his fame most securely R yai j n - 

 rests. Promoted in 1801 to a situation in the Labo- stitution 

 ratory of the Royal Institution in London, he attached experi- 

 himself to the study of galvanism in the interval of me 1 " t [ on 

 the other and more purely chemical pursuits which electricity, 

 the duties of his situation required. He had already, 

 at Clifton, made experiments with the pile of Volta, 

 and taken part in the discussion of its theory and 

 effects, then (as we have seen) so actively carried on 

 in Britain. In his papers of that period we find not 

 only excellent experiments, but happy and just rea- 

 soning. The chemical theory of the pile namely, 

 that the electrical effects observed by Galvani and 

 Volta are due solely or chiefly to the chemical ac- 

 tion of the fluid element on the metals was more 

 strongly embraced by him then than afterwards. In 

 November 1800 he concluded that " the pile of 

 Volta acts only when the conducting substance be- 

 tween the plates is capable of oxidating the zinc ; 

 and that in proportion as a greater quantity of oxy- 

 gen enters into combination with the zinc in a given 

 time, so in proportion is the power of the pile to de- 

 compose water and to give the shock greater." He 

 concludes that " the chemical changes connected 

 with" oxidation " are somehow the cause of the elec- 

 trical effect it produces." 2 His views on this sub- 

 ject underwent some modification afterwards. In 

 his Elements of Chemical Philosophy, published twelve 

 years later, we find the following statement of his 

 opinions on the subject : " Electrical effects are exhi- 

 bited by the same bodies acting as masses, which 

 produce chemical phenomena when acting by their 

 particles ; it is, therefore, not improbable that the 

 primary cause of both may be the same." A little 

 further on he adds : " They," speaking of electrical 

 and chemical energies, " are conceived to be dis- 

 tinct phenomena, but produced by the same power 

 acting in the one case on masses, in the other on par- 

 ticles." 3 



1 Davy hit off his principal's character in a single sentence, " Beddoes had talents which would have exalted him to the pin- 

 nacle of philosophical eminence, if they had been applied with discretion." 



2 Works, ii., 162. 



3 Works, iv., 119. In his Bakerian lecture (1806), he had said, " In the present state of our knowledge, it would be useless 

 to attempt to speculate on the remote cause of the electrical energy, or the reason why different bodies, after being brought into 

 contact, should be found differently electrified ; its relation to chemical affinity is, however, sufficiently evident. May it not 

 be identical with it, and an essential property of matter ?" Works, vol. v., p. 39. 



