Biographical memoir of Sir Humphry Davy / [Georges Cuvier].

  • Georges Cuvier
Date:
1833]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Biographical memoir of Sir Humphry Davy / [Georges Cuvier]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    densation of gases as mechanical agents ; finally, the colour of the water of rivers and of the ocean f ; were subjects that at¬ tracted his attention, and produced instructive and interesting papers. Particular mention ought to be made of the course of lectures which he delivered before the Board of Agriculture in 1803, and which were published in 1813 It was thus that a young man of twenty-two, who had no practical experience of the subject, unexpectedly enlightened the proprietors and most experienced cultivators in Great Britain. Such occupation, however, as we have been alluding to, may be said to have formed only a kind of diversion from his severer studies. His experiments on the decomposition of bodies by galvanic electricity were of a superior order, and it was to them that he owed his sudden elevation, by the unanimous voice of Europe, to the rank of one of the first chemists of our age. No one will dispute that there was never displayed, in such a length¬ ened investigation, a greater degree of perseverance, method, and precision; and rarely have these qualities been crowned with more brilliant success. An observation casually made by Galvani in 1789, in which he had seen the parts of a dead animal become convulsed when a metallic communication was established between a nerve and the muscle, had excited the attention not only of the learned but of the vulgar : some believed that they saw in it the explanation of all the vital phenomena, and the means of recalling even the dead to life. Volta referred these facts to their true cause, viz. the electricity produced by the contact of two metals; and, in his endeavours to render the influence of the metals more considerable, he increased the number of the plates, and se¬ parated them by others of less conductive power; thus con¬ structing his famous pile, the constant source of an electricity * Roy. Soc. Lond. 27th April 1823; Phil. Trans, v. cxiii. p. 193; Ann. de Chim. et de Phys. tom. xxv. p, 80. •j- Salmonia (2d edit.), p. 316; Bibl. Univ. tom. xl. p. 114. $ Elements of Agricultural Chemistry, in a Course of Lectures for the Board of Agriculture, 4to and 8vo, Lond. 1813. Translated into French, 12mo, Paris 1820, and into German, by F. Wolf, with additions by A. Thaer, 8vo, Berlin 1814.
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