The Bakerian Lecture, on some chemical agencies of electricity ... From the Philosophical Transactions / By Humphrey Davy.

  • Humphry Davy
Date:
1807
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Bakerian Lecture, on some chemical agencies of electricity ... From the Philosophical Transactions / By Humphrey Davy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Well burned charcoal and plumbago, or charcoal and iron, might be made the exciting powers; and such an arrangement if erected upon an extensive scale, neutrosaline matter being employed in every series, would, there is every reason to believe, produce large quantities of acids and alkalies with very little trouble or expence. Ammonia and acids capable of decomposition, undergo che- mical change in the Voltaic circuit only when they are in very concentrated solution, and in other cases are merely carried to their particular points of rest. This fact may in- duce us to hope that the new mode of analysis may lead us to the discovery of the true elements of bodies, if the materials acted on be employed in a certain state of concentration, and the electricity be sufficiently exalted. For if chemical union be of the nature which I have ventured to suppose, however strong the natural electrical energies of the elements of bodies may be, yet there is every probability of a limit to their strength: whereas the powers of our artificial instruments seem'capable of indefinite increase. Alterations of electrical equilibrium are continually taking place in nature; and it is probable that this influence, in its faculties of decomposition and transference, considerably in- terferes with the chemical alterations occurring in different parts of our system. The electrical appearances which precede earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and which have been described by the greater number of observers of these awful events, admit of very easy explanation on the principles that have been stated. Besides the cases of sudden and violent change, there must be constant and tranquil alterations in which electricity is
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