wbU ao potters of Hsrouerg to lEleflriritg Samaa 3. Waif, H.I., P?.l., mi. Jforfcgam llntorrattg. N. $. as* EDUCATIONAL BRIEFS No. 2a JULY 1908 ' P H 1 'L A. D E L P H-. I liROAD AND VINE STREETS St Josephs College 17th and Stiles Sts., Phila., Pa. Under direction of the Jesuit Fathers. Founded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1852 . Classical and Scientific Courses of Studies. Military Drill and Instruction by an Officer of the United States Army. Well-equipped gym- _ nasium. Six free Scholarships are offered every year for Competition. For particulars address, Rev. DENIS J. O’SULLIVAN, S.J M President. Dolphin Series Selections in Prose and Poetry For Catholic Schools Teachers’ Edition. Grades I-VIII, with Appendices; 336 pages, bound in cloth, . Price , $0.50; by post, $0.60 Scholars’ Edition, in separate pamphlets, as follows : — Grades I & II, 40 pages, 5 cents a copy; lots of 50 copies, $1.75 32 “ “ “ « “ 1.50 32 “ “ “ “ “ 1.50 44 “ “ “ “ “ 1.90 36 “ “ “ “ “ 1.60 48 « “ “ “ « : 2.00 44 “ “ “ “ “ 1.90 1.40 (Combined) Grade III, Grade IV, Grade V, Grade VI, Grade VII, Grade VIII, Lyrics of Loyalty 24 “ The above quantity prices apply to any order for at least fifty copies, even though the order extends to the pamphlets of more than one Grade. If the number of copies ordered does not total at least fifty, the rate is 5 cents a copy. Prices are net : that is, carriage in each case is additional. 1305 2lrcb Street ®ljp 0nlpl)ttt flrraa Philadelphia, pa. Priests as Pioneers of Discovery in Electricity By James J. Walsh. M.D., PH D., LL,D. t Fordham University, N, ‘Y’. Preprinted, by permission, from “The Ecclesi- astical Fveview,'* June, 1908 Copies may be bad. on application to the Superintendent of Parish Schools Broad and "Vine Streets Philadelphia 5 11 V\f I £ Educational Briefs No. 23 July, 1905 American Ecclesiastical Review The Dolphin Press 1305 Arch Street, Philadelphia ■ 5 (*) o d O0 - i Priests as Pioneers of Discovery in Electricity. ^^fr$r C L E CT RICA L and magnetic phenomena are ^ so surprising in themselves, so seductive in their mystery, and therefore so likely to attract the attention of the intelligent observer, that it might almost confidently be expected that clergy- men with some leisure on their hands, who were at all interested in natural science, or what we would now call nature study, would quite natur- ally, in the days when little was known about electrical science, devote some time at least to the investigation of it. The fact that the names of very few clergymen are known in this con- nexion would seem to indicate that at the time when only the curious things about the as yet unborn science of electricity— the phenomena of magnetic attraction and repulsion and of elec- trical manifestations after the rubbing of various substances— -were known, clergymen had but very little of intellectual curiosity or zest for observa- tion and experiment, or else were prevented from investigation of these curious phenomena, either by direct prohibition of such studies to churchmen or else by the feeling that such studies might be dangerous to their faith. The suppo- 3 m t 9/73 PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY sition, however, that clergymen did not investi- gate these very surprising manifestations, I have recently found while reading up some of the early history of electricity, is entirely gratuitous and unfounded. Not long since I had occasion to go over Priestley’s History of Electricity , published orig- inally just after the middle of the eighteenth century, and it is little short of marvellous to find how many Catholic clergymen had made important observations on electrical and mag- netic phenomena during the first half of this century, and thus helped to bring a new science into that vogue in which it already was when Franklin’s work was done. A brief list of these and their principal discoveries will make clear what an interesting chapter in the history of science is here involved. Father Beccaria in Italy investigated the relations of electricity to air and water. Abbe Nollet in France made observations on the effects of electricity on ani- mals and plants. Abbe Menon also in France made additional observations on the effects of electricity on animals. Canon Von Kleist of Kammin, in North Germany, invented the Ley- den jar. Professor Gordon, a Scotch Benedic- tine monk, invented the first practical frictional electrical machine. Besides these there was Father Prenditz in Bohemia, a Premonstraten- sian monk, who suggested the identity of light- ning and electricity, apparently quite independ- ently of Franklin, and almost at the same time. 4 PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY Then, before the end of the century, there was x\bbe Haiiy, the father of crystallography, who studied pyro-electricity successfully, and in- vented a method of preventing- the compass from being improperly affected by iron or steel in its immediate neighborhood, which was of the greatest possible service to mariners, and is indeed the basis of such precautionary provi- sions that are so necessary in our iron, or rather steel, vessels of the modern time. It has occurred to me that an account of the discoveries made by these men, with brief sketches of their careers as far as they are avail- able, would be of interest to clergymen gener- ally, for the science of electricity has always maintained its attractiveness for the Catholic clergy. Besides, the materials thus gathered will furnish additional and quite convincing evi- dence of the fact that there is not and never was any opposition between science and religion, and that it is perfectly possible for a man to accept all the principles of religion on faith and yet retain a mind perfectly open to all the possible suggestions of experimental science, absolutely free to follow all the avenues of investigation that may suggest themselves, quite untrammeled to accept such conclusions as may be reached by the experimental method. Indeed it is from the history of clerical contributions to science that this absolutely false notion is best controverted and shown to be the result of an intolerant as- sumption on the part of those who protest so 5 PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY much against ecclesiastical intolerance with re- gard to science. It will be found that all of these clergymen who devoted themselves so successfully to the study of electrical phenomena were distinguished for their inquiring disposition, their scientific temperament and painstaking devotion to the experimental method, so that they were not likely to miss the significance of their observa- tions. Authority might mean much to them in the realm of religion, but they knew no tram- mels in the field of science, and sought truth as the result of questions put to nature quite as strenu- ously as the veriest of sceptics in matters of faith. It is sometimes thought that electricity or, to be more accurate, the phenomena of magnetism which were known to the older generations at- tracted very little attention until comparatively recent times. Franklin’s excursion into the sub- ject here in America is supposed to have at- tracted the world-wide attention that it did mainly because it was such distinctly original and unusual work. It was as if people had not thought of the possibility of the development of a science of electricity before his epoch-making observations and investigations. While not wishing to diminish by jot or tittle Franklin’s well-deserved glory in science, such an impres- sion is completely erroneous. Men were inter- ested in the phenomena of magnetism particu- larly and in certain electrical manifestations from very early times. 6 PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY The inquiring geniuses who made the thir- teenth century what it was in the history of education had an all-pervading curiosity, which would not allow so interesting a subject as mag- netism and its possibilities to escape them. Brother Potamian summed up not long since in the introduction to a translation of the famous letter of Petrus Peregrinus on magnetic phe- nomena, which was written in the thirteenth century, a large number of references to mag- netism which occur in the literature of the thir- teenth century. A single paragraph from this will serve to show how widespread was the in- terest and how much men were occupied with natural phenomena at a time when the study of nature, according to most of our modern his- tories of education, is supposed to have been very far from men's thoughts. Brother Pota- mian says : Abbot Neckam, the Augustinian (1157-1215), dis- tinguishes between the properties of the two ends of the lodestone, and gives in his De Utensilibus what is, per- haps, the earliest reference to the Mariner's compass that we have. Albertus Magnus, the Dominican (1193- 1280), in his treatise De Mineralibus, enumerates differ- ent kinds of natural magnets and states some of the properties commonly attributed to them. The minstrel Guyot de Provins, in a famous satirical poem, written about 1208, refers to the directive quality of the lode- stone and its use in navigation ; as do also Cardinal de Vitry, in his Historia Orientalis (1215-1220) ; Brunetto Latini, poet, orator and philosopher, in his Tresor des Sciences , a veritable library, written in Paris in 1260 ; Raymond Lully, the Enlightened Doctor, in his treatise 7 PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY De Contemplatione , begun in 1272, and Guido Guini- celli, the poet-priest of Bologna, who died in 1276. 1 It is evident that most of those who were in- terested in magnetic phenomena about the time of the beginning of the universities were clergy- men. Only one of those mentioned by Brother Potamian was not an ecclesiastic. There seems to have been one of these special periods of in- terest in a definite department of science in the thirteenth century with regard to magnetism. One of the great practical results of this was the protection of the mariner’s compass. After this century, however, neglect came over this depart- ment of magnetism until Gilbert’s time. He was a contemporary of Francis Bacon, and did so much for the science of electricity that it was never quite to sink out of sight again. The great revival of history in the subject came, however, at the beginning of the eighteenth cen- tury, and then, as in the thirteenth century, the most important contributors to it were once more ecclesiastics. When Franklin appeared on the scene with his interest in electricity, about the middle of the eighteenth century, far from opening up a new subject then or even one of which his par- ticular generation had not been interested, as is 1 The Letter of Petrus Peregrinus on the Magnet (A. D. 1869), translated by Brother Arnold, M.Sc., Principal of La Salle Institute, Troy, with Introductory Notice by Brother Potamian, Professor of Physics in Manhattan College, N. Y. 8 PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY so often thought, he had really taken up a branch of science that had attracted no little attention from the men of immediately preced- ing generations. Anyone who wishes to realize this should consult the History and Present State of Electricity , with Original Experiments , written by the famous English scientist Joseph Priestley to whom we owe the discovery of oxygen and most of our knowledge with regard to oxidation processes. The original edition of this History of Electricity l which is in two volumes and con- tains altogether nearly one thousand pages of printed matter, probably over 250,000 words of writing, was issued in 1757. It will be remem- bered that Franklin's kite experiments were made about 1750 and that his work in electricity attracted attention in Europe during this sixth decade of the eighteenth century. How lively was the interest in the subject of electricity can be best appreciated very probably from the fact that a second edition of Priestley's History was called for within three years, and that a third was issued in 1775. This history indeed gave him almost more of the reputation as a scientist 1 The History and Present State of Electricity, with Original Experiments, by Joseph Priestley, LL.D., F.R.S. The Third edition corrected and enlarged. Causa latet, vis est notissima. Ovid. Vol. I. London, Printed for C. Bathurst, and T. Lowndes, in Fleet- Street ; J. Rivington and J. Johnson, in St. Paul’s Churchyard; S. Crowder, G. Robinson, and R. Bald- win, in Paternoster Row ; T. Becket, and T. Cadell, in the Strand. MDCCLXXV. 9 ♦ PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY which he enjoyed when he came to this country than did his original work in chemistry. The most distinguished of these clergymen pioneers in electricity was undoubtedly Giovanni Battista Beccaria, who was distinguished not only for his work in electricity, but also for his devotion to practical astronomy, and his contri- butions to the physical sciences, in matters re- lated to both these subjects. He was born at Mondovi, a small town situated in the Province of Cuneo in Northern Italy and not far from the French border. A battle was fought in this neighborhood, some 80 years after his birth which makes the name of the town more familiar than it otherwise would be. Beccaria was born 7 October, 1716, and at the early age of sixteen entered the religious order of the Fathers of the Pious Schools. He was looked upon as a very promising student, and was given special oppor- tunities to devote himself to favorite branches. Curious as it may seem to those who think of the teaching of science as a comparatively modern introduction into schools, and especially Catholic schools, Beccaria received special train- ing to become a professor of experimental physics. He was given a professorship in this, in con- nexion with his own order, first at Palermo in Sicily and later at Rome. At the early age of twenty-two he was transferred to a similar posi- tion, but of more importance from an educa- tional standpoint, at Turin. While here he was 10 1 PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY * asked to become the tutor to the young: princes of Chablais and de Carignan. As a consequence of this official position, though it was the cus- tom of his order to transfer teachers from one school to another after intervals of a few years, Beccaria was not moved from Turin for many years and it eventually came to be his place of residence for most of the remainder of his life. That his scientific work soon began to attract world-wide attention will perhaps best be appre- ciated from the fact that in May, 1775, when he was not yet forty years of age, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. This was a much envied distinction at the time and one not usually conferred on any except those who had done distinctly original work of a high order in science. As a consequence of his elec- tion Father Beccaria communicated several im- portant papers relating to his investigation into electricity and various astronomical subjects directly to the Royal Society and these gave him a further reputation among English-speak- ing people. No great discovery in physical science is at- tached to his name, but few men did as much as he did to awaken enthusiasm for experimental investigation into science in his time, and thus he was an active factor in bringing about the marvelous burst of progress in the physical sci- ences generally, which came at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is this which so successfully ushered t 11 PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY in the modern scientific era of which we are so proud. The value of his observations have been uni- versally acknowledged. It is not too much to say that what he accomplished with regard to the relation of electricity to meteorological phe- nomena practically laid the foundation of a new science of meteorology. In his masterly article on electricity in the eighth volume of the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica , which is often referred to as a compendious authoritative review of the development, Professor George Chrystal, the Professor of Mathematics at the University of St. Andrews, Edinburgh, has summed up Father Beccaria’s contributions to electricity and meteorology. The thoroughly conservative character of Professor Chrystal’s judgment makes it clear how distinguished is the place that Father Beccaria must be considered to hold in the history of these sciences : Beccaria, a celebrated Italian physicist, kept up the spirit of electrical discovery in Italy. He showed that water is a very imperfect conductor of electricity, that its conducting power is proportional to its quantity, and that a small quantity of water opposes a powerful resistance to the passage of electricity. He succeeded in making the electric spark visible in water by discharging shocks through wires that nearly met in tubes filled with water. In this experiment the tubes, though sometimes eight or ten lines thick, were burst into pieces. Beccaria like- wise demonstrated that air adjacent to an electrified body gradually acquired the same electricity ; that the electricity of the body is diminished by that of air ; and 12 i PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY that the air parts with its electricity very slowly. He considered that there was a mutual repulsion between the particles of the electric fluid and those of air, and that in the passage of the former through the latter a temporary vacuum was formed. Beccaria’s ex- periments on atmospherical electricity are of the great- est interest to the meteorologist. In his History of Electricity already mentioned, the first edition of which it may be recalled was issued two years after Father Beccaria’s election as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, Mr. Priestley, who always calls him Signior Beccaria, says that he was one of the most emi- nent of all the electricians abroad, that is, on the Continent. He describes some of Father Beccaria’s experiments on air and its relations to electricity, and calls attention to the fact that he had arranged his experiments for this matter very ingeniously or, as Priestley puts it, “in a pleasing and satisfactory manner.” Priestley was so taken with the experiments arranged by the Italian clerical observer that he gives them in considerable detail. Because his description serves to bring out the thoroughly experimental character of the work at a time when habits of experiment are supposed to have been uncom- mon and most of all among clergymen, it has seemed worth while to reproduce here what Priestley says : Beccaria proves that the air, which is contiguous to an electrified body, acquires by degrees the same elec- tricity ; that this electricity of the air counteracts that of 13 PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY the body, and lessens its effects, and that as the air ac- quires, so it also parts with this electricity very slowly. He began his experiments by hanging his linen threads upon an electrified chain and observing that they diverged the most after a few turns of his globe. After that they came nearer together, notwithstanding he kept turning the globe and the excitation was as powerful as ever. When he had kept the chain electrified a considerable time, and then discontinued the friction, the threads collapsed by degrees, till they hung parallel, and then began to diverge again as before. Thus the second di- vergence of the threads took place, when the chain was deprived of its electricity, and when that w T hich the air had acquired began to show itself. While the threads were beginning to diverge with the electricity of the air, if he touched the chain, and thereby took off what remained of its electricity, the threads would separate farther. Thus the more the electricity of the chain was lessened, the more did the electricity of the air appear. While the threads were in their second divergence he hung two other threads shorter than the former by an- other silk thread to the chain; and w T hen all the elec- tricity of the chain was taken quite away, they would separate like the former threads. If he presented other threads to the former, in their second divergence, they would all avoid one another. In this complete and elegant manner did Signior Beccaria demonstrate that air actually receives electricity by communication, and loses it by degrees; and then the electricity of the air counteracts that of the body which conveys electricity to it. Signior Beccaria also made a variety of other experi- ments which demonstrate other mutual affections of the air and the electric fluid, particularly some that prove their mutual repulsion, and that the electric fluid in passing through any portion of air makes a temporary T 4 vacuum . PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY He brought the ends of two wires within a small dis- tance of one another, in a glass tube, one end of which was closed and the other immerged in water, and ob- served that the water sunk in the tube every time that a spark passed from the one to the other, the electric fluid having repelled the air. Some further variations in his methods of ex- periment show at once Father Beccaria’s in- genuity of mind and also how persistent he was in putting questions to nature. This is perhaps even better illustrated in Father Beccaria’s ex- periments on water than in those with regard to air. Priestley has once more expressed his ad- miration for the work done in this line and has given an excellent resume of what the Italian clergyman-scientist succeeded in discovering. His account is so compressed, yet so clear, it represents so well the significance of Father Beccaria’s experiments as seen from the stand- point of a contemporary, and makes so clear the interest which all this experimental science was arousing all over Europe, that I venture to make another rather lengthy quotation from Priestley: Signior Beccaria’s experiments on the water, showing its imperfections as a conductor, are more surprising than those he made upon air, showing its imperfections in the contrary respect. They prove that water conducts electricity according to its quantity, and that a small quantity of water makes a very great resistance to the passage of the electric fluid. He made tubes full of water part of the electric circuit, and observed that when they were very small they would IS PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY not transmit a shock, but that the shock increased as wider tubes were used. But what astonishes us most in Signior Beccaria’s ex- periments with water is his making the electric spark visible in it, notwithstanding its being a real conductor of electricity. Nothing, however, can prove more clearly how imperfect a conductor it is. He inserted wires, so far as nearly to meet, in small tubes filled with water, and, discharging shocks through them, the electric spark was visible between their points as if no water had been in the place. The tubes were generally broken to pieces, and the fragments driven to a considerable distance. This was evidently occasioned by the repulsion of the water and its compressibility, it not being able to give way far enough within itself, and the force with which it was repelled being very great. The force with which small quantities of water are thus repelled by the electric fluid, he says, is prodigious. By means of a charge of four hundred square inches he broke a glass tube two lines thick, when the pieces were driven to the distance of twenty feet. Nay, he some- times broke tubes eight or ten lines thick, and fragments were driven to greater distances in proportion. He found the effect of the electric spark upon water greater than the effect of a spark of common fire on gunpowder ; and he says he does not doubt but that, if a method could be found of managing them equally well, a cannon charged with water would be more dreadful than one charged with gunpowder. He actually charged a glass tube with water, and put a small ball into it, when it was discharged with great force, so as to bury itself in some clay which he had placed to receive it. After Father Beccaria, the most distinguished experimental scientist in electrical matters dur- ing the eighteenth century was the Abbe Nollet, who is famous for his series of experiments on the effects of electricity on animals and plants at 16 PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY this time. Priestley concedes the priority in this field of investigation to Abbe Nollet, and says that the English philosophers who led the way in almost every other application of electricity were among the last to try its effects upon ani- mals and other organized bodies. Nollet began his experiments in this department by studying first the evaporation of fluids by electricity. The conclusions which he reached from his ex- periments are quoted in full in his own words in Priestley, and give the best possible idea of how patient must have been his investigation, how ingenious his methods of experimentation, and how carefully his observations were controlled before he ventured to give them forth as having scientific value. They illustrate beyond per- adventure that the experimental method and the experimental temperament are not things of the very recent time, and that they are by no means incompatible with a clergyman’s education or his faith. Electricity augments the natural evaporation of fluids; since, excepting mercury, which is too heavy, and the oil of olives, which is too viscous, all the others which are tried suffered a diminution which could not be as- cribed to any other cause than electricity. Electricity augments the evaporation of those fluids the most which are most subject to evaporate of them- selves. For the volatile spirit of sal ammoniac suffered a greater loss than spirit of wine or turpentine ; these two more than common water, and water more than vinegar or the solution of nitre. Electricity has a greater effect upon fluids when the vessels which contain them are non-electrics, the effects I? t PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY always seeming to be a little greater when the vessels were of metal than when they were of glass. This increased evaporation was more considerable when the vessel which contained the liquor was more open, but the effects did not increase in proportion to their apertures. For when these liquors were electrified in vessels whose aperture was four inches in diameter, though they presented to the air a surface sixteen times larger than when they were contained in vessels whose aperture w r as one inch in diameter, they were, neverthe- less, far from suffering a diminution proportioned to that difference. Electrification does not make any liquors evaporate through the pores, either of metal or of glass, since after experiments which were continued ten hours there was found no diminution of their weight when the vessels in which they were contained were well stopped. Abbe Nollet’s years ran almost coincident with the eighteenth century. He was born at Pimprez in what is now the district of Oise, in 1700, and, like man}' another distinguished ob- server in physical science, lived to fill out sev- enty years of studious life. He was born of poor parents, and owed his opportunity to re- ceive an education to the fact that his parish priest became interested in him, and that he was educated at the expense of the Church. How much his contemporaries, even in foreign coun- tries, thought of him can be judged from his election to the London Royal Society in 1734, when he was not yet thirty-five years of age. Just before his fiftieth birthday he became a member of the Academy of Sciences of Paris. These distinctions were for work done in elec- 18 i PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY tricity before Franklin took up the subject. It is not surprising-, then, that the genial Abbe was appointed to a newly-erected chair of experi- mental physics, in the college of Navarre in Paris, in 1753. He was undoubtedly one of the most popular writers on science during the cen- tury. He did more than perhaps any other to make the general public realize how much was being done, all over the world, for the progress of electricity, and to give them an interest in various phases of electrical science. In the his- torical Introduction to his article on electricity in the Encyclopedia Briiannica , Professor Chrys- tal of Saint Andrews, whom we have already quoted with regard to Father Beccaria, gives Abbe Nollet a merited place among the investi- gators of electricity just before and after Frank- lin’s time. Those who think that Franklin’s writings were pioneer publications in this field will probably be not a little surprised here to learn that Nollet’s Essai sur V Electricity was published in 1746, and that his Richer ches , con- taining many additional articles on the same subject, was published in 1749. The year 1750 is sometimes said to be a landmark which rep- resents the beginning of modern electricitjq but this is only true if we neglect a series of import- ant communications made before that, and in- deed Franklin’s work, as we have already said, was only a manifestation in America of an en- thusiasm for electrical studies which had been awakened in every country in Europe toward the end of the first half of the eighteenth century. 19 t PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY It was not alone on full-grown and highly- organized living things that Abbe Nollet made his experiments, but also on seeds and plants in the process of growth. These experiments have been confirmed by many later observers, and the French clergyman’s originality rendered them all the more impressive by the fact that very little has been added by the knowledge to which we have attained in this matter. I am indebted once more to Priestley for the descrip- tion of the observations. Perhaps the most in- teresting feature of this paragraph of Priestley’s account is his emphasis on the caution exercised by the French clergyman-naturalist to be abso- lutely sure of his conclusions before he an- nounced them as definitely certain. A little more of this same spirit, it might strike the modern student of physical science, would be an excellent thing for many of our experimentalists of the present day. It seems as though it might be a decided advantage for a man to have a good training in matters of conscience, before taking up physical science, to make him more careful of his declarations and keep him from rushing into print with half-baked conclusions announced as certain, when they are only chance observations that further investigation so often shows to be founded on false assumptions. He took two garden-pots filled with the same earth and sowed with the same seeds. He kept them con- stantly in the same place and took the same care of them, except that one of the two was electrified fifteen 20 < PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY days together for two or three, and sometimes four, hours a day. The consequence was that the electrified pot always showed the sprouts of its seed two or three days sooner than the other. It also threw out a greater number of shoots, and those longer in a given time; which made him believe that the electric virtue helped to open and display the germs, and thereby to facilitate the growth of plants. This, however, our cautious philosopher only calls a conjecture which required further confirmation. The’ season, he says, was then too far advanced to allow him to make as many experi- ments as he could have wished, but he says the next course of experiments had greater certainty, and they are not less interesting. Some of his experiments on growing- vegetables show with what care he investigated these prob- lems that he had taken up and at the same time illustrate his methods of work. Priestley says that : He electrified for four or five hours together fruit, green plants, and sponges dipped in water, which he had carefully weighed, and found that, after the experiment, all those bodies were remarkably lighter than others of the same kind, weighed with them both before and after the experiment, and kept in the same place and tem- perature. Undoubtedly the most interesting discovery in electricity before Franklin’s hypothesis, and the demonstration as to the identity of lightning and electricity was that of the Leyden Jar. Like many another discovery in science the name is a misnomer. It was called the Leyden Jar or Phial, because originally supposed to have been made by Mr. Cuneus, a native of Leyden, who 21 « PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY was repeating some experiments which he had seen performed by Professors Muschenboeck and Alamand in the famous university of that town. The discovery of the principle on which the Ley- den Jar is founded is now generally acknowl- edged to have been made by Dean Von Kleist of the Cathedral of Kammin, which, however, Priestley in his History calls Camin. Kammin is a little town in the Province of Pomerania, in the distant Eastern part of Prussia, not far from the Baltic Sea, and situated on what was called the Kammin Boden near the River Dievenow. It is about forty miles from Stettin, and prob- ably never has had more than the number of in- habitants which it possesses at the present time, about S,ooo. In the section of his History of Electricity which concerns the history of the Leyden Phial itself till Dr. Franklin's discov- eries relating to it, Priestley tells the story of Pean Von Kleist's discovery in the observant clergyman's own words. These are to be found in the Register of the Academy at Berlin, to which Von Kleist's paper had been communi- cated by the well-known Dr. Lieberkuhn, of Berlin, to whom on the fourth of November, 177 5, Von Kleist sent the following account of his discoveries with regard to the accumulation of electricity, and the serious effects produced, by taking a shock of it when thus accumulated. This account runs as follows : When a nail, or a piece of thick brass wire, etc., is put into a small apothecary's phial and electrified, re- 22 « PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY markable effects follow, but the phial must be very dry or warm. I commonly rub it over beforehand with a finger on which I put some pounded chalk. If a little mercury or a few drops of spirit of wine be put into it the experiment succeeds the better. As soon as this phial and nail are removed from the electrifying glass, or the prime conductor to which it had been exposed is taken away, it throws out a pencil of flame so long that, with this burning machine in my hand, I have taken above sixty steps in walking about my room. When it is electrified strongly I can take it into another room and there fire spirits of wine with it. If, while it is electrifying, I put my finger on a piece of gold, which I hold in my hand to the nail, I receive a shock which stuns my arms and shoulders. It is rather amusing-, in the light of what we know now of the effects of even a severe shock from a Leyden Jar, to read the accounts of the symptoms noted in themselves by the early ob- servers who received shocks from it. Imagina- tion evidently played a large role in the matter. Winckler of Leipzig said that the first time he tried the jar he found great convulsions by it in his body; it put his blood into great agitation ; he was afraid of an ardent fever, and was obliged to use refrigerating medicines. He felt a heavi- ness in his head as if a stone lay upon it. Twice it gave him a bleeding at the nose. After the second shock his wife could scarcely walk, and though a week later, her curiosity stronger than her fears, she tried it once more, it caused her to bleed at the nose only after taking it once. Many men were terrified by it, and even serious professors describe entirely imaginary symptoms. PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY The jar was taken around Europe for exhibition purposes and did more to awaken popular in- terest than all the publications of the learned with regard to electricity, in all the preceding centuries. Such is the way of the world. The French were more interested in science than the Germans, however, at this time. Another French clergyman who experimented on the effects of electricity upon living things during the first half of the eighteenth century was the Abbe Menon, principal of the College of Bueil at Angers. Abbe Menon reached the same conclusions as his more distinguished French colleague, Abbe Nollet. His experi- ments are mentioned by Priestley (Vol. I, p. 173) and have a special interest of their own. Abbe Menon experimented with many familiar animals and birds. He found that cats, pigeons, and sparrows lost weight when they were con- stantly under the influence of electrification for six hours or more. He also discovered that the same thing seemed to be true of larger animals, and especially human beings. Instead of con- cluding as might be expected in a period of such intense interest in electricity that this was due to some marvelous esoteric influence of electrical forces on tissues within the body, or important vital processes, he suggested with a scientific conservatism very creditable at that period that the reason for the loss in weight was nothing more than an increase in the insensible perspira- tion of animals. This very cautious conclusion 24 PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY has been confirmed by subsequent investigations,. Abbe Menon’s conservative declaration can scarcely help but draw additional admiration to him since it was an anticipation in physiology, to some extent at least, as well as in electricity. One of the very interesting men whose name must be mentioned in the history of electricity at this time, though Priestley does not devote very much space to his work, is Professor George Gordon of Erfurt, who is said to have been a Scotch Benedictine monk. Professor Gordon occupied the chair of philosophy at the University of Erfurt, and he was the first to use a cylinder of glass in order to produce frictional electricity. With these cylinders he was able to produce sparks for experimental purposes much more readily and with more constancy, and in more available form, than had been the case be- fore. His invention added not a little to the possibilities of experimental electricity, since by its means it was possible to have a rather uni- form source of electricity for experimental pur- poses even on unfavorable days. Besides, his instrument was portable, and instead of a cake of resin he insulated by means of a frame fur- nished with a network of silk. Perhaps in nothing will his ingenuity be better realized than by a recital of the story which is told of his extension of the sources of electricity available for experimental purposes in the labor- atory into the animal world. On one occasion, having realized by observations made before 25 PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY that the animal's fur could by appropriate rub- bing- in favorable weather be made to exhibit very pronounced electrical phenomena, he ex- cited the electricity of “ a harmless necessary cat ” so strongly that when it was conveyed by means of an iron conductor to a little distance from the animal, it fired spirits of wine. A favorite method of experimentation at this time, and one which had been introduced to a consid- erable extent by Gordon, was the determination of what substances could be set on fire by means of electric sparks. Winckler, for instance, had succeeded in setting- fire to French brandy, b)^ means of a spark from his fing-er when he him- self was strongly electrified. Professor Gordon did the still more surprising thing of kindling spirits by means of a jet of electrified water, though the water itself remained cold, of course, and was apparently unaffected by the presence of electricity in it. In a word this Scotch Bene- dictine was another of those inquiring minds who in the garb of monks and priests did ex- perimental work of a high order during the decade or two just before Franklin's discovery, and led up to the development of electricity which came during the subsequent century and a half. Nor did the interest of Catholic clergymen in the science of electricity, nor their success in bringing about new developments of it, cease after the discoveries made by Franklin and the wide extension of the interest in the science which brought so many investigators into the 26 PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY field. Volta, who did so much at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, had been a clerical student and re- mained all during his life in close touch with his clerical friends. Galvani, who because of his delicacy of conscience which made him refuse to take the oath to the new government that had been established in Italy with the connivance of Napoleon, was said to be more a monk than a layman, and who was indeed buried in the habit of the Third Order of St. Francis, is another of the distinguished contributors to the science at this time. The third great name in science at the end of the century is that of the Abbe Haiiy, better known as the Father of Crystallography than for his contributions to electrical science, but whose investigations into the property of crystals and certain electrical phenomena which they display under varying conditions of temper- ature, merited for him also the title of the father of pyro-electricity. Professor Chrystal in the introduction to his article on Electricity in the Encyclopedia Britannica (Ninth Edition) in the historical review of the development of the science says: But it was reserved for the Abbe Haiiy to throw a clear light on this curious branch of the science. He found that the electricity of the tourmaline decreased rapidly from the summits or poles towards the center- middle of the center of the crystal, where it was impercep- tible; and he discovered that when a tourmaline is broken into any number of fragments, each fragment when ex- cited has two opposite poles. Haiiy discovered the same 27 PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY property in the Siberian and Brazilian topaz, borage of magnesia, mesotype, prehnite, sphene and calamine. He also found that the polarity which minerals receive from heat has a relation to the secondary forms of their crystals — the tourmaline, for example, having its resin- ous pole at the summit of the crystal which has three faces and its vitreous pole at the summit which has six faces. In the other pyro-electrical crystals above men- tioned Haiiy detected the same deviation from the rules of symmetry in their secondary crystals which occurs in tourmaline. Indeed this chapter of what Catholic clergy- men accomplished for the developing science of electricity, before it became the formal depart- ment of knowledge which was to be studied in the universities and be the subject of academic attention generally, is the best possible proof of the readiness of the clerical mind to follow clues of original investigation in the problems of nature and to turn quite naturally to nature study. In their hours of leisure these men de- veloped a deep interest in the wonderful phe- nomena of magnetism and electrical manifesta- tions generally. They set themselves to find the reason for these manifestations and so laid the foundation of our modern electricity. To them more than to any other set of men, even the university professors of the time, is due its development. They could not have employed their leisure more interestingly for themselves nor as the outcome proved more beneficially for mankind. This chapter in the development of electrical science should be a definite response to 28 c PRIESTS AS PIONEERS IN ELECTRICITY the argument so often advanced that clergymen are prevented by their acceptance of so many truths on faith from having such an openness of mind as would enable them to be original dis- coverers or investigators in science. The very opposite proves to be the case, for in proportion to their numbers more of them devoted them- selves to the asking of questions of nature than from among any other class of educated people of the time. 29 t « List of the Educational Briefs No. 1. January , 1903 M. Gabriel Compayre as a Historian of Pedagogy BROTHER AZARIAS, F.S.C. No. 2. April , 1903 The Social Bearing of Elementary Instruction THE REV. W. POLAND, S.J. No. 3 . July , 790J Elementary Schools and Religious Education of the People JOANNES JANSSEN No. 4. October , 790J The “Original Sources’ ’ of European PIistory THE REV. HUGH T. HENRY, LITT.D. No. 5. January , 1904 The Training of the Teacher THE VERY REV. JAMES A. BURNS, C.S.C., PH.D. No. 6. April , 1904 Catholicity and Civilization THE VERY REV. THOMAS BOUQUILLON, D.D. No. 7. July , 1904 Old Times in the Colonies THE REV. HUGH T. HENRY, LITT.D. No. 8. October , 1904 Catechetics THE REV. MICHAEL F. CLANCEY No. 9. January , 1905 History in Our Public Schools THE REV. FRANCIS F. DONNELLY, S.J. No. 10. April , 1905 The Social State of Catholic Countries No Prejudice to the Sanctity of the Church JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN No. 11. July , 1905 The Religious State of Catholic Countries No Prejudice to the Sanctity of the Church JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN No. 12. October , 1905 Modern Psychology and Cx\tholic Education THE REV. EDWARD A. PACE, PH.D. No. 13. January , 1906 Boards of Education and Historical Truth Chiefly Among Women MRS. MARGARET SULLIVAN No. 14. April , 1906 The Primary School in the Middle Ages BROTHER AZARIAS, F.S.C. No. 15. July . 1906 The Notion of Morality THE VERY REV. JOHN T. DRISCOLL, S.T.L. No. 16. October , 1906 Cloistral Schools BROTHER AZARIAS, F.S.C. No. 17. January , 1907 Christian Family Life in Pre-Reformation Days ABBOT GASQUET, O.S.B. No. 18. April , 1907 The “War Against Christ' ' in France VANCE THOMPSON The Pope and the French Government. Who's to Blame ? THE REV. JOHN GERARD, S.J. No. 19. July , 1907 Catholic Parish Schools in ihe United States An Introductory Study THE VERY REV. JAMES A. BURNS, C.S.C., PH.D. No. 20. October , 1907 The New Syllabus. Its Meaning and Purpose THE REV. H. J. HEUSER, D.D. No. 21. January , 1908 Catholic Colonial Schools in Pennsylvania THE VERY REV. JAMES A. BURNS, C.S.C., PH.D. No. 22. April , 1908 Of a Bull and a Comet THE REV. JOHN GERARD, S.J. A Saint Averse to Celibacy THE REV. HERBERT THURSTON, S.J. “Let the adornments of home be chaste and holy pictures, and still more, sound, interesting, and profitable books .” — III Plenary Council of Baltimore. SUBSCRIBE TO Benziger'S Magazine The Popular Catholic Family Monthly SUBSCRIPTION, $2.00 A YEAR WHAT BENZIGER’S MAGAZINE FURNISHES IN A SINGLE YEAR Six Art Pictures in colors, suitable for framing, size 8 x 12 inches. Fifty complete stories, equal to a book selling at $1.25 each. 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