Note 144 — Chapter IX

The appearance of acid and alkaline matter, in water acted on by a current of electricity, at the opposite electrified metallic surfaces, was observed in the first chemical experiments made with the column of Volta—(see Nicholson’s Journal, vol. iv. p. 183, and vol. iv. p. 261, for Mr. Cruickshank’s Experiments; and Annales de Chimie, tom. xxxvii. p. 233, for those of M. Desormes): On some Chemical Agencies in Electricity: by Sir Humphry Davy.—Philosophical Transactions for 1807. The various theories of electro-chemical decomposition are carefully stated by Faraday, in his fifth series of Experimental Researches on Electricity, in which he thus states his own views:—“It appears to me that the effect is produced by an internal corpuscular action exerted according to the direction of the electric current, and that it is due to a force either superadded to or giving direction to the ordinary chemical affinity of the bodies present. The body under decomposition may be considered as a mass of acting particles, all those which are included in the course of the electric current contributing to the final effect; and it is because the ordinary chemical affinity is relieved, weakened, or partly neutralized by the influence of the electric current in one direction parallel to the course of the latter, and strengthened or added to in the opposite direction, that the combining particles have a tendency to pass in opposite courses.”