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
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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![[ *6 ] placed at a greater depth than twenty times its own thicknefs, it will not fink, if its defeent be not a {lifted by the weight of the incumbent water, To prove this, he gives us a curious experiment, viz. by keeping off the prefijure of the water, from the top of the finking body, and Jinking it to a proper depth, he found, that the moji ponde¬ rous body would be buoyed up, and fiupported by the water only. See the 2d vok of Boultons epi¬ tome, pag. 305. This experiment {hews us be¬ yond all contradiffion, that the earth has no power of attractions nor a deficending body any power of gravitation -y for if it had, the farther it was funk in the water, the nearer it muft be to the centre of the earth, and of confequence the attraction muft be the greater; but this, we find, is contrary to experience ; fo that the whole power of defeending is impreffed upon it by the air^ or by other bodies forced upon it by the in¬ cumbent air. This experiment alone is more than fufficient to deftroy the fine theories of attraction and gravitation; it alfo thews us how, and by what means, two marble (labs, finely polifhed, are what they call attracted to each other, and require a great force to feparate them; a force im proportion to the breadth of the flabs; but this has been fhewn by other experiments to be no¬ thing but the prefiure of the air^ or atmofiphere; for w](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30375186_0026.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
