Caloric: its mechanical, chemical, and vital agencies in the phenomena of nature (Volume 1).

  • Metcalfe, Samuel L. (Samuel Lytler), 1798-1856.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Caloric: its mechanical, chemical, and vital agencies in the phenomena of nature (Volume 1). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    unknown ether, as supposed by Descartes, Huyghens, Hooke, Euler, Young, Sir John Herschel, Arago and others. Nor is it yet finally settled whether white light is composed of seven primitive rays, as supposed by Newton, or of only three fundamental colours, red, yellow and blue, as maintained, with many cogent reasons deduced from experiment, by Sir David Brewster. On the same subject, the advocates of the undulatory or wave theory are equally at variance among themselves; for while Huyghens maintained that solar light is composed of only two elementary colours, yellow and blue, Hooke reduced all its modifications to red and violet; whereas Young reduced the whole to red., green and violet. What is still more remarkable, neither of the two great rival parties has ever yet attempted to ascertain the relations of light to caloric and electricity; nor in what way they per- form so many wonderful efiects in the movin^g drama of the universe. But if they be connected in the operations of na- ture, they must be united in theory. And it will be a leading object of the following work to prove, by a careful generaliza- tion of facts, that caloric and electricity are mutually convert- ible into each other; consequently, that they are modifications of one and the same essence, which is the active principle in light, and in all the phenomena of nature. Since the time of Sir Isaac Newton, it has been generally supposed that all the molecular changes of matter may be re- ferred to attractive and repulsive forces. Yet the cause of attraction and repulsion has not been identified with any known principle capable of demonstration. The orbits of planets, and the times of their revolutions, have been mea- sured with mathematical precision; but the cause of their