MOST IMPORTANT ERRORS IN CHEMISTRY, ELECTRICITY, AND MAGNETISM, POINTED OUT AND REFUTED ; AND THE PHENOMENA OF ELECTRICITY, AND THE POLARITY OF THE MAGNETIC NEEDLE ACCOUNTED FOR AND EXPLAINED. BY A FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY. ' Naturam expellas furc& tamen usque recurret." Hon. LONDON: JAMES RIDGWAY, PICCADILLY. 1846, PREFACE. ** HUMANUM est errare." The object of the pre- sent tract is to draw the attention of men of science, to what the author believes to be most pernicious errors in Chemistry, Electricity, and Magnetism 5 namely, that water is decomposable, that hydrogen is an elementary body, and that there are two kinds or states of Electricity and Magnetism ; and to point out the true mode of action of these fluids. If the errors in question should turn out to be mere fragile creations of the author's brain, no possible evil can result from this publication. If, on the contrary, they should be found to have a real existence, of which the author has the fullest conviction, there can be no doubt that incalculable benefit must ensue by the removal of these mis- chievous intruders from the avenues of science, A2 293 iv where they cannot but very seriously impede our approach to the sacred temple. These considerations, the author trusts, will be received as an apology for his venturing to obtrude his ideas on the public attention. Well House, Malvern Well 9 28th Sept. 1846. MOST IMPORTANT ERRORS, NOTWITHSTANDING the eulogium passed upon Sir Humphry Davy by his admirable biographer, Dr. Paris, if we except the Safety Lamp,* we do not ap- pear to be so much indebted to his labours as is generally imagined ; nor has chemistry been left by him at all in a satisfactory state. He is said to have overthrown the theory of combustion of Lavoisier, and to have proved that oxygen is not the principle of acidity ; but what has he substituted in their place? Instead of light and heat being properties of oxygen, which that substance parts with or deve- lopes at the time of its union with a combustible body, (according to the French chemist), Davy tells us that light and heat are the mere effects of motion, * The efficacy of this lamp is due to the very unexpected dis- covery that flame will not pass through the interstices of a metallic wire gauze, (and which Dr. Paris allows a celebrated en- gineer claims to have found out before Sir Humphry), as the miners already knew that the " fire damp" would not explode in the absence of flame. It is then not to Sir Humphry Davy as a chemist, but as a mechanist, that we are indebted for this useful i nstrumeut. or, as he terms it, of " intense chemical action ;* y * and with respect to the cause of acidity, he leaves it wholly unaccounted for. He is said, again, to have enriched science with some evanescent metals that are supposed to be the bases of alkaline earths ; but which will most probably turn out to be only com- pound bodies, as Mr. Curadon asserted, in his memoir read at the French Institute. But what could the greatest genius effect without a knowledge of the materials upon which he worked, or of the tools which were to aid him ? Now of what can these consist but of elementary substances, and what do chemists know of elementary bodies ? If we are led to suppose that it is one of the excellencies of Divine wisdom to arrive at the most astonishing results by the simplest of means, it would naturally follow, that to make any considerable progress in chemistry we should adopt a similar course. Instead of this, we have now upwards of fifty elementary bodies ; so injudiciously have we multiplied the four simple elements handed down to us from antiquity. Our immortal countryman, Bacon, seeing the error of raising up systems without ascertaining the facts by which they were to be upheld, enforced the necessity of experiment for supplying these desi- derata. But we now fall into the other extreme, and are daily multiplying experiments and pro- * And yet, by other experiments, Davy found the most vivid effects of combustion known (light and heat), were those pro- duced by the condensation of oxygen and chlorine. (hieing results without having any clear or definite object thus making " confusion worse confounded." In fact, modern chemistry looks very much like a scramble for popularity. Instead of pondering on and scrutinizing some few of the million of experi- ments already made, which invite investigation, it seems to be the only question, who can run the fastest on the road to novelty ; and he who contrives to pick up some wild apple in his route, which has a little more colour in its cheeks than ordinary, is forthwith crowned with public applause, to the great envy and disappointment of his breathless competitors. With these remarks, for which I beg to apolo- gize, I shall proceed to the consideration of the errors in question. Preliminary to our examining the experiments relative to the " decomposition of water," let us consider, for a few moments, upon what authority, independently of chemistry, this fluid may be consi- dered as an elementary body : not that I mean for one moment to contend that scriptural, or any other authority, is to preclude a conclusion against direct evidence ; but merely, that if a strong doubt should be raised upon the subject, the Old Testament, the dicta of ancient philosophers, and the doctrine of probabilities, may be allowed their fair weight in deciding the question, and induce chemists to adopt that view of the subject until the contrary shall be shewn by unanswerable experiments ; as there is, I 8 think, great reason to believe that the facility with which Cavendish's theory has heen received, has placed chemistry in a worse condition than during the reign of the alehy mists. We find then, in the first chapter of Genesis, that " God created the heaven and the earth," and after- wards that " the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."* Again, that " God said, Let the waters under the heaven he gathered together unto one place, and let dry land appear. And God called the dry land earth." From these passages it would seem, (and the con- trary is not stated in the rest of Genesis) that the water must have been previously created, and not at the time the heaven and the earth are spoken of. It also appears, that in the first instance the waters entirely covered the earth. Thus we find in one other passage, which I will beg leave to quote, as it is not a little remarkable, and has hitherto, I believe, escaped notice, these words : " And God said, Let there be a Firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters." Now it is a curious circumstance that the Hebrew word which is translated into " Firmament," signifies "Expansion"^ from which * A French author says that " water is the most noble of ele- ments, seeing that it was upon the water that God was carried before the creation of the world." f See note on the word " Firmament," 1st chap. Genesis, v. 6. Oxford edit. 1834. 9 it must be inferred that the earth was a nucleus in fusion, surrounded by the aqueous fluid from which it partially disengaged itself by expansion, and thus caused dry land to appear. If then we apply eastern metaphor to the seven days' creation, we have in Genesis a clear and dis- tinct confirmation of the present theory of the origin and constitution of our planet. So far the Scriptures. We have now the great authority of Aristotle, who states water to be one of the four elements. When we bear in rnind that the Grecian and Roman philosophers were men of a mental calibre vastly superior to our own, of which we have the most indisputable proofs in the monuments they have left behind in all the branches of learning (viz. Poetry, Eloquence, History, Philosophy, Archi- tecture, Strategy, and the Arts) we cannot sup- pose that those elements were given without great consideration ; and we know that the ancients were not influenced in this respect by the Jewish Sacred Writings, to which, (if they were acquainted with them) they certainly paid no deference.* If it be said that with all their superiority they were not chemists, I think that observation gra- tuitous, and the fact extremely improbable; for when Sir Humphry Davy was engaged with the Admi- ralty, upon his electro -chemical process for protect- ing the sheathing of our ships (a scheme which, * <( Crcdat Judeeus Apclla, non ego !" HOR. 10 aftor a very great expenditure, was at length aban- doned), it was found, from the discovery of an old Roman galley of the time of Trajan, that they were acquainted with this electro-chemical aetion, and had applied it to the ship in question, the bottom being found coated with leaden sheets, fastened with copper nails.* Now, then, let us consider this question upon the ground of probability. I have already observed that the highest conception we can have of Divine power, is that of producing the most splendid results by the simplest means ; and whenever we are able to comprehend any of the processes of nature, we find this invariably to be the case. Is it probable, then, that the water of our globe, now three times in extent to that of the earth, and which, at the time of the creation, must have been still more capacious, as much of it must have been * Marchetti, cited by Dr. Paris, to whose excellent work I am indebted for much of the matter upon which I shall have to com- ment. There are two reasons why the scientific works of the ancients are not familiar to us. First That after the fall of the Roman Empire, the monks, being in all probability unacquainted with science, would only preserve such works as related to literature, and of those only such authors as had been known by their great celebrity. Secondly That if some few of the monks were not ignorant of science, still manuscripts of that description would be much more rare than the former, and the religious fanaticism of the age would militate against their preservation. 1! volatilized to form an atmosphere ;* is it probable, I ask, that so important a body to the existence and comfort of the inhabitants of the earth, and on that account so bountifully supplied, should be a com- pound of gaseous substances, the quantities whereof to form such a body far exceed the stretch of human imagination, though the latter be elastic enough to adopt the calculation of Mr. Arago, that the velocity of light is seventy-seven thousand leagues in a second of time ? We cannot, therefore, suppose such a combination of gaseous matters, without adopting the unphiloso- phical notion of an overwhelming necessity. We have then added to the great improbability, both scriptural authority and the opinion of the ancient philosophers against this doctrine. We will now proceed to an examination of the experiments by which the composition of water is said to be established. It will be but just to premise, that the investiga- tion of an important process, and the repetition of such process by an advocate of the doctrine, is a very different affair from the scrutiny and repetition of the same experiment by an opponent, and this, notwithstanding there should exist not the remotest doubt as to the bona fides of the operator. I cannot enforce this remark better than by * Davy says, " the atmosphere always contains water in the elastic and invisible form, varying in quantity with the tempe- rature." 12 quoting the sentiments of Sir Humphry Davy upon this point in the fifth dialogue of his " Last Days of a Philosopher." " By often repeating," he says,