One day Professor Allamand and Van Musschenbroek, together with a pupil named Cuneus--a sort of Wagner, it would seem, sitting at the feet of Dr. Faust--were trying the effects of electricity on a small iron cannon, suspended by silk threads, and connected by a wire with a glass bottle half full of water, when whey were startled by an extraordinary incident. Curious, like all students of occult sciences, young Cuneus took it into his head to see what would happen if he held the prime conductor of the electrical machine in one hand and the electrified bottle of water in the other. Something wonderful happened, indeed, causing profound amazement and terror to the three persons witnessing it, most of all to the immediate experimenter, who sank down on the floor, half dead with fright. Master Cuneus had received an electric shock. It was the first electric shock ever administered by artificial means to any human being. Such was the origin of the long-famous ‘Leyden jar,’ or, as it was originally called, ‘Leyden phial.’ The whole of the scientific world of Europe was as much startled by the discovery that electricity could be imprisoned, like Ariel in an oak-tree, as the two Leyden professors and their pupil had been, and a perfect fury set in for more experiments. A professor of the University of Leipzig, in Germany, Dr. Winckler, started the excitement by submitting his body to frequent powerful shocks, opening up, besides, a scientific discussion in which he came forth as the champion of the proposition that the discovery of the ‘Leyden phial’ was due, not to the professors in the Dutch university, but to a German ecclesiastic, Ewald George von Kleist, who made the experiments of Messrs. Allamand and Van Musschenbroek a year before them. His own sensations in submitting to the force of electric shocks, Professor Winckler described, doubtless with some exaggeration, as being convulsed from head to toe, and the prey of violent agitations, which threw his arms about, and made the blood rush from his nose. Dr. Winckler did not venture upon many experiments; but his spouse, undismayed by the arm-shaking and nose-bleeding of her lord, and having the combined curiosity of a woman and a professor’s wife, continued upon her own person the electric shocks. However, she did not take many, nor did science gain by the sacrifice. When a few graspings of the ‘Leyden phial’ had deprived her of the power to walk, and, what was worse, to speak, she followed the example of her bleeding husband, and took ‘cooling medicines.’ All these wonderful facts were made widely known at the time, and created the most profound interest. Professor Musschenbroek, of Leyden, added not a little to the prevailing excitement by writing to his friend René Antoine de Réaumur, inventor of the thermometer named after him, a long letter, given at once to the public, in which he dwelt upon the terrible effects of the mysterious agency which he had helped to call into being, and wound