A discourse on the torpedo. Delivered at the anniversary meeting of the Royal Society, November 30, 1774 / By Sir John Pringle, Baronet, President. Published by their order.
- John Pringle
- Date:
- 1775
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A discourse on the torpedo. Delivered at the anniversary meeting of the Royal Society, November 30, 1774 / By Sir John Pringle, Baronet, President. Published by their order. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![[ ] before the fifteenth century, an sera ever memorable for the revival of fcience. Then lived and fkmrifhed belon, rondelet, salviani, gesner, and others, who not only reftored what was anciently known in natural hiftory, but greatly improved the fubjedt. Yet experiments were ftill rare and feeble, till, in the next century, harvey ap¬ peared, and began to make them on birds and quadru¬ peds. Nor did that famous interpreter of nature finifh his career, and clofe his eyes in death, before they beheld the riling hate of this Society, and the Academia del Cimen- to, our elder but fhort-lived lifter, already formed. Some of the molt eminent of that academy judging an inquiry into the truth of what had been recorded concerning the torpedo, to be an object worthy their attention, availed themfelves of their vicinity to a lea ftored with that fort of filh, to make the trials, redi, one of the moft liberal and enlightened geniufes of that age, began, and was afterwards aflifted by borelli and steno the Dane, his collegues. Laftly lorenzini, his fcholar, engaged in the fame purfuit, and publilhed a curious treatifeupon the fubjedt. redi’s firft ftep was by experiments to cliftinguifh between the real properties of the torpedo, and fuch as had erroneoully been afcribed to it, by the learned, as well](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30350359_0014.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
