An essay on electricity : explaining the principles of that useful science, and describing the instruments, contrived either to illustrate the theory, or render the practice entertaining : illustrated with six plates. To which is added, a letter to the author, from Mr. John Birch, surgeon, on the subject of medical electricity / by the late George Adams.

  • Adams, George, 1750-1795.
Date:
1799
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on electricity : explaining the principles of that useful science, and describing the instruments, contrived either to illustrate the theory, or render the practice entertaining : illustrated with six plates. To which is added, a letter to the author, from Mr. John Birch, surgeon, on the subject of medical electricity / by the late George Adams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    02 VARIOUS HYPOTHESKS This is eminently true with respect to elcctri- city; a field of inquiry, wherein fancy has, in- deed, sufficiently exhibited her luxuriance. No other science has had more admirers, nor been subject in so short a space of time, to so great a variety of hopotheses: these have been changed, corrected, and improved, almost as often as the instruments and machines which have been made use of upon the occasion. Indeed, so little of the nature of electricity was known before the appara- tus became considerably extended, that even the existence of the aeent seems to have been a matter O of speculation; but, after the instruments had demonstrated that such a fluid actually existed, the mode of that existence was altogether unde- termined, and became a subject of much dispute. Some have supposed the electric matter to be a kind of unctuous effluvia, arising by means of friction from substances termed electrics fer se% others, the ether pointed out by Sir Isaac Newton^ in the effects of which a certain subtile medium was concerned. Some called it elementary Are, and imagined it to be a modification of the fire they termed an element; while others conceived it to be a fluid distinct from, chemical fire, but of a nature greatly resembling it. After two opposite and remarkably distinct cfleets had been observed in the attractive and I repulsive powers of electricity, according as tbey