BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 59 



meats the pieces of amber and precious stones ■which the predecessors of Guericke 

 rendered attractive and luminous by friction, we should gain nothing by going be- 

 yond 1600, when Gilbert, the introducer of the word electricity, published his truly 

 scientific treaties " De Magnete." The discussion would thus range at utmost 

 over only two centuries and a half; and as the Magdeburgh sphere of sulphur is 

 the earliest artificial arrangement which can be fairly called a machine, our oldest 

 electrical instrument is apparently less than 200 years old. 



Such, accordingly, has been the conclusion of our historians of Electricity ; nor 

 did it occur to me, Avhilst prosecuting researches into the eai'ly history of electri- 

 cal instruments, to doubt its accuracy. Last summer however, I was directed to- 

 wards a new channel of inquiry, by a paper read to the Archseologieal Institute at 

 its meeting in Edinburgh by my colleague Professor Simpson, in which he drew 

 attention to the application of the living torpedo as a remedial agent by the ancient 

 GreSk and Roman physicians, in demonstration of the antiquity of the practice of 

 employing electricity therapeutically. I had not looked at the subject in this light 

 before, but inquiry soon satisfied me that a living electric fish was the earliest, and 

 is still the most familiar, electric instrument employed by mankind. Before en- 

 tering into the proof of tliis it is worth while noticing, that although the historians 

 of Electricity have not overlooked the fact that the ancients were aware of the 

 electrical powers of the torpedo, they have passed unnoticed the early therapeutic 

 employment of the fish, as a truth which, however interesting to the naturalist or 

 the physician, had no significance for them. Priestley for example, in his " History 

 and Present State of Electricity," 1775, refersto the gymnotus as ''possessed of a 

 kind of natural electricity, but different from the common electricity, in that persons 

 who touch it in water are shocked and stunned by it, so as to be in danger of drown- 

 ing" and quotes Muschenbroeck's query, " whether the sensation communicated 

 by the torpedo does not depend upon a similar electricity ?" But both references 

 occur under " Miscellaneous Experiments," illustrating the then " present" state of 

 electrical science, and no historical imiiortance is attached to them. This is the more 

 remarkable, that when Priestley wrote, the only electrical power known to charac- 

 terize the fishes which he names was that of giving the " shock ;" and so marvel- 

 lous did this jDhenomenon appear to him, that he goes the extreme length of declar- 

 ing, that " the electric shock itself, if it be coiisidered attentively, will appear al- 

 most as surprisiog as any discovery that Sir Isaac E'ewton made ; aud the man 

 who could have made that discovery by any reasoning a priori would have been 

 reckoned a most extraordinary genius." 



It seems strange, after these statements, that Priestley should have given no 

 place in his history either to the ancient recognition of the shock-giving power of 

 the torpedo, or to its application as a remedial agent; but the explanation of his 

 silence probably lies in the fact, that he was not fully satisfied that the shock of 

 the torpedo or gymnotus was electrical. " It is to be regretted," he says, "that 

 none of the persons who have made experiments on these fishes should have endea- 

 voured to ascertain whether they were capable of exhibiting the phenomena of at- 

 traction and repulsion, or the appearance of electric light, as experiments of this 

 kind are of principal consequence, and must have been easy to make." Later his- 

 torians of Electricity, especially those writing after the experiments thus referred 

 to, had (in spite of difiiculty, which Priestley quite undervalued) been successfully 

 made, have not failed to quote the classical references to the torpedo, but have at- 

 tached no importance to its medical use ; and no Natural Philosopher, so far as I 



