A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



battery in power as the battery exceeds the blow- 

 pipe? 



Another and even more important theoretical result 

 that flowed from Davy's experiments during this first 

 decade of the century was the proof that no elementary 

 substances other than hydrogen and oxygen are pro- 

 duced when pure water is decomposed by the electric 

 current. It was early noticed by Davy and others that 

 when a strong current is passed through water, alkalies 

 appear at one pole of the battery and acids at the other, 

 and this though the water used were absolutely pure. 

 This seemingly told of the creation of elements a 

 transmutation but one step removed from the creation 

 of matter itself under the influence of the new " force." 

 It was one of Davy's greatest triumphs to prove, in the 

 series of experiments recorded in his famous Bakerian 

 lecture of 1806, that the alleged creation of elements 

 did not take place, the substances found at the poles of 

 the battery having been dissolved from the walls of the 

 vessels in which the water experimented upon had been 

 placed. Thus the same implement which had served 

 to give a certain philosophical warrant to the fading 

 dreams of alchemy banished those dreams peremptorily 

 from the domain of present science. 



" As early as 1800," writes Davy, " I had found that 

 when separate portions of distilled water, filling two 

 glass tubes, connected by moist bladders, or any moist 

 animal or vegetable substances, were submitted to the 

 electrical action of the pile of Volta by means of gold 

 wires, a nitro-muriatic solution of gold appeared in the 

 tube containing the positive wire, or the wire trans- 

 mitting the electricity, and a solution of soda in the op- 



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