176 HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY. 



was destined to do so much for its advance, first 

 contributed his labours to it. Humphry Davy was a 

 young man who had been apprenticed to a surgeon 

 at Penzance, and having shown an ardent love and 

 a strong aptitude for chemical research, was, in 

 1798, made the superintendent of a "Pneumatic 

 Institution," established at Bristol by Dr. Beddoes, 

 for the purpose of discovering medical powers of 

 factitious airs 2 . But his main attention was soon 

 drawn to galvanism; and when, in consequence of 

 the reputation he had acquired, he was, in 1801, 

 appointed lecturer at the Royal Institution in Lon- 

 don, (then recently established,) he was soon put in 

 possession of a galvanic apparatus of great power ; 

 and with this he was not long in obtaining the most 

 striking results. 



His first paper on the subject 3 is sent from Bris- 

 tol, in September 1800 ; and describes experiments, 

 in which he had found that the decompositions 

 observed by Nicholson and Carlisle go on, although 

 the water, or other substance in which the two 

 wires are plunged, be separated into two portions, 

 provided these portions are connected by muscular 

 or other fibres. This use of muscular fibres was, 

 probably, a remnant of the original disposition, or 

 accident, by which galvanism had been connected 

 with physiology, as much as with chemistry. Davy, 

 however, soon went on towards the conclusion, that 



* Paris, Life of Davy, i. 58. 



8 Nicholson's Journal, 4to. iv. 275. 



