A treatise on electricity wherein its various phoenomena are accounted for, and the cause of the attraction and gravitation of solids, assigned : To which is added, a short account, how the electrical effluvia act upon the animal frame, and in what disorders the same may probably be applied with success, and in what not / By Francis Penrose.

  • Penrose, Francis, 1718-1798.
Date:
1752
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on electricity wherein its various phoenomena are accounted for, and the cause of the attraction and gravitation of solids, assigned : To which is added, a short account, how the electrical effluvia act upon the animal frame, and in what disorders the same may probably be applied with success, and in what not / By Francis Penrose. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [ *5 ] c< leave a bubble of true elaftic air at the bot- <c torn.” The above experiments prove, that, when¬ ever air is fufficiently divided or broken to pieces, light is produced; fo that the light or heat in eledlricity, is no other than, we find, may be produced feveral other ways. For the air being violently rubbed or ground to pieces between your hand and the glafs globe, whirled brifldy about, the air between your hand and the globe is ground fo fmall as to be in the form of lights which is expanded or fent off from the glafs globe in the fame manner as light from a candle, or other luminous body; which emiflion is con¬ tinually fupplied by the common air prefiing in between the rays of light, emitted from the glafs ball. That this is the method, by which it adts, feems very clear: for you may not only hear the hiding noife of the air prefiing towards the globe, but alfo plainly feel the air with your hand, near the globe or tube. The chief reafon (and what has been our great misfortune) that we have not been able to difcover the caufe of eledtricity, feems to be the leaving that philofophy, which has been revealed to us, and putting in its ftead theories of our own invention. For, if we had confidered (from the revealed account that is given us of the formation of i