The first great step towards a practical insight into the nature and phenomena of electricity, hitherto a mere plaything, was made in the year 1745 in the ancient Dutch city and university of Leyden. Two professors of the high school, John Nicholas Allamand, a member of the Royal Society of London, and Peter Van Musschenbroek, author of a treatise entitled ‘Introductio ad philosophiam naturalem,’ had been trying, like many other scientific men of the time, electrical experiments, when the thought occurred to them that the real reason why all the work of the same kind had as yet produced such slight results was that the electrical force was absolutely unstable. It slipped, so to speak, through their hands, before they could look at it; it vanished ‘like a dream, leaving no substance behind.’ One body, they knew, had the power of electrifying another, but only to let the mysterious force pass on, like a current of water running down a cataract. Could they but ‘bottle up’ electricity, what a grand gain would this be to science! So thought the two professors of Leyden university; and thought justly. They went on experimenting, with this end in view, till at last so-called ‘accident,’ the mother of millions of human inventions and discoveries, threw a brilliant light on the dark road along which they were groping their way.
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.