HISTORY OF GALVANISM. 35 



many of them sufficiently ingenious and interest- 

 ing at the time when they were proposed, it is 

 not necessary to relate, as they have been entirely 

 superseded by his subsequent discoveries. I may 

 observe, that one of two consequences seemed 

 necessarily to result from it ; either that water, 

 by some kind of combination with the two states 

 of electricity, is convertible into oxygen and hy- 

 drogen ; or that one of these bodies has the power 

 of uniting to other bodies, without apparently 

 affecting their form, and passing silently through 

 them. The earlier discoveries of Sir H. Davy 

 seemed to afford a very powerful support to the 

 chemical hypothesis of Fabroni, and to be equally 

 irreconcileable to that of Volta ; and they appear, 

 when they were first announced, to have been 

 viewed in this light by the discoverer himself, and 

 by the most scientific of his countrymen. 



With respect to the nature of the galvanic in- Theoreti- 

 fluence, or the primary cause of its operation, the s " 

 English philosophers seem at this time to have 

 been nearly unanimous in ascribing it to electri- 

 city. On the Continent, however, where the late 

 discoveries that had been made in this country 

 were little known or imperfectly understood, a 

 considerable difference of opinion still existed on 

 this subject. Of these discussions, which have 

 now entirely lost their interest, it will not be ne- 

 cessary to give any account, but I shall briefly 

 notice an hypothesis which was brought for- 

 wards about this time by Brugnatelli, of Pavia, 



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