Page:Hamel Telegraph history 1859.djvu/7

 1805 he practised medicine in Frankfort, and from 1805 till 1820 he was a member of the Academy of Sciences at Munich, where the King of Bavaria had given him the title of Privy Counsellor (Geheimer Rath). His great merits as an anatomist and physiologist are universally known.

Galvanism had interested him, like Humboldt and others, principally in the hope of being able to make its study useful to clear up some of the most mysterious portions of physiology. I find, however, that he had already, in November 1801, paid attention to the chemical action of the galvanic current. In January, 1808, he, together with another member of the Academy of Sciences at Munich, the well known chemist Gehlen, had made communication to that Academy in reference to the brilliant galvanico-chemical discoveries of Humphry Davy, at the laboratory of the Royal Institution in London.

It seems to me quite certain that an event in connexion with the war against France, brought on by Austria fifty years ago, in 1809, gave rise to the first galvano-electric telegraph.

The Austrian troops had on the 9th of April, 1809, begun to cross the river Inn, and so entered Bavaria quite unexpectedly. King Maximilian had hardly been