210

Editorial Notes

Part Five: Electricity

6/V/11: Electricity
124/1 Reid’s teaching cycle was such that he lectured on natural ­philosophy
during the 1754–55 academic session at King’s College, Aberdeen.
His lecture notes on fols 1r–2r of this manuscript were probably
written in this period. For a brief set of notes covering the same
introductory material see AUL, MS 2131/8/V/3, fol. 2v.
124/3 While Reid’s definition of electricity as ‘a Power or Virtue in Bodies,
excited by Friction’ is firmly rooted in the conception of electricity
current in the seventeenth century, he adds a Newtonian element
when he speaks of powers of attraction and repulsion; see Niels H. de
V. Heathcote, ‘The Early Meaning of Electricity: Some Pseudodoxia
Epidemica’. Propositions 1–13 draw heavily on J. T. Desaguliers’
writings on electricity and, in particular, Desaguliers’ A Dissertation
concerning Electricity (1742). On Desaguliers’ Dissertation, see J.
L. Heilbron, Electricity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centur-
ies: A Study of Early Modern Physics, pp. 293–4. Heilbron writes
that Desagulier’s Dissertation ‘offers an inconsistent yet briefly
influential theory’, p. 293.
124/8 Reid’s discussion of the differences between electric and non-­
electric bodies is indebted to Desaguliers, Dissertation, pp. 2–3; J. T.
­Desaguliers, ‘Some Further Observations concerning Electricity’; J. T.
Desaguliers, ‘Some Things concerning Electricity’; J. T. D­ esaguliers,
‘Some Thoughts and Experiments concerning Electricity’.
124/28 Reid’s distinction between vitreous and resinous forms of electri-
city was initially drawn the French electrician Charles François de
Cisternay Dufay; see Dufay, ‘A Letter from Mons. Du Fay, F.R.S.
and of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, to his Grace Charles
Duke of Richmond and Lenox, concerning Electricity’, pp. 263–5.
Desaguliers also employed Dufay’s distinction; see Desaguliers,
Dissertation, p. 39, and J. T. Desaguliers, ‘Some Conjectures con-
cerning Electricity, and the Rise of Vapours’, p. 140.
125/3 On the effect of moist or cold and dry air, see J. T. Desaguliers,
‘An Account of Some Electrical Experiments Made before the
Royal Society on Thursday the 16th February 1737–38’, p. 204, and
­Desaguliers, ‘Some Thoughts and Experiments concerning Elec­
tricity’, p. 192.
125/7 Reid’s ‘Conjectures concerning Electricity’ address salient features

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 Electricity211

of Benjamin Franklin’s theory of electricity. Three editions of

­Franklin’s text were available to him in 1754–55: Benjamin Franklin,
Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Made at Philadelphia
in America (1751); Benjamin Franklin, Experiments and Observa-
tions on Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America (1751–53),
which included a new section added in 1753 entitled ‘Supplemental
Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Part II’; and Benjamin
Franklin, New Experiments and Observations on Electricity. Made
at Philadelphia in America (1754). A copy of the 1754 edition
of Franklin’s text survives in Aberdeen University Library, which
suggests that Reid used this edition.
125/10 For Franklin’s conjecture that the ‘electrical fire’ is a subtle fluid dif-
fused through material bodies, see Franklin, New Experiments and
Observations on Electricity, esp. p. 51. The notion of there being an
equilibrium in the fluid features prominently in the discussion of the
Leyden jar at the beginning of the text; Franklin, New Experiments
and Observations on Electricity, pp. 1–9.
125/17 Franklin, New Experiments and Observations on Electricity, pp.
10–12, 57, 62, 117.
125/19 On the two electricities, see Franklin, New Experiments and Obser-
vations on Electricity, esp. pp. 2–3, 15. For Franklin’s concept of a
‘natural quantity’ of the electrical fluid in a body, see Franklin, New
Experiments and Observations on Electricity, pp. 117–19.
125/29 On the equilibrium of the electrical fluid being disturbed by friction,
see Franklin, New Experiments and Observations on Electricity, pp.
15, 75–8. On the manifestations of the restoration of the equilibrium
of the electrical fluid, see Franklin, New Experiments and Observa-
tions on Electricity, pp. 6, 8–9, 14–15, 20–1, 44, 117, 119–20.
125/34 Franklin, New Experiments and Observations on Electricity, pp.
23–33, 70–9, 83–5. On the theoretical significance of Franklin’s de-
scription of the electrical properties of the glass in a Leyden jar, see
Heilbron, Electricity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,
pp. 330–4.
125/36 Franklin, New Experiments and Observations on Electricity, p. 51.
126/14 Reid’s query appears to have been prompted by the experiments
using glass and sulphur globes described by Franklin and his
associ­ate Ebenezer Kinnersley in Franklin, New Experiments and
Observations on Electricity, pp. 99–106. Franklin interpreted the
experimental data in terms of the behaviour of positive and negative

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 212 Editorial Notes

electricities, whereas Reid’s query is framed in terms of Dufay’s

distinction between vitreous and resinous electricities.
126/18 Franklin, New Experiments and Observations on Electricity, pp. 28,
48, 49, 90–2.
126/21 Franklin, New Experiments and Observations on Electricity, pp.
36–49, 111–29.
126/23 Franklin, New Experiments and Observations on Electricity, pp.
25–6; Heilbron, Electricity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Cen-
turies, p. 337.
126/29 Both Dufay and Franklin maintained that there are two forms of elec-
tricity, in Dufay’s case vitreous and resinous, in Franklin’s positive
and negative. Reid here blends together their ideas. His reference to
‘Male’ and ‘Female’ electricities suggests that he also knew of the
ideas of the German electrical theorist G. M. Bose, who speculated
that there were two kinds of electrical ‘fire’, male and female. Reid
may have learned of Bose’s work through a detailed report on
research that had been carried out in Germany on electricity that
appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine in April 1745; Anon., ‘An
Historical Account of the Wonderful Discoveries, Made in Germany,
&c. concerning Electricity’, esp. p. 195. This report also mentioned
Dufay’s distinction between vitreous and resinous electricities
(p. 193).
126/34 Reid thought of his piece of sulphur as an electrical body; see pro-
position 2, p. 124, ll. 9–10. The sulphur was, however, behaving in
an anomalous fashion because it should not have been giving shocks
to Reid and his friends in wet weather; compare what he states in
propositions 11–12 above, p. 125, ll. 1–3; Desaguliers, ‘An Account
of Some Electrical Experiments Made before the Royal Society on
Thursday the 16th of February 1737–38’, p. 204, and Desaguliers,
Dissertation, p. 6.
126/35 The physician David Skene was one of Reid’s closest associates in
Aberdeen, despite the twenty-year age gap between them. Beginning
in 1753, Skene shared a medical practice in Aberdeen with his father
Andrew, who was also a close friend of Reid. The younger Skene
was a skilled man-midwife, having studied under the Scot William
Smellie in London, and, like his father, was involved in the care of
the sick poor at the Aberdeen Infirmary. Along with Reid, he was
later a member of the Gordon’s Mill Farming Club and the Aberdeen
Philosophical Society.

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 Mr Epinus 213

127/5 Reid’s silk stockings were in his view electrical bodies; see propo­
sition 2, p. 124, ll. 9–10. The electrical effect of the stockings was
increased by the cold weather conditions; compare Desaguliers, ‘An
Account of Some Electrical Experiments Made before the Royal
Society on Thursday the 16th of February 1737–38’, p. 204. Silk was
first identified as an electric in Stephen Gray, ‘An Account of Some
New Electrical Experiments’, published in the 1720–21 volume of
Philosophical Transactions. Reid’s comments on the behaviour of
his silk and worsted stockings are similar to the observations later
made by the Scottish electrician Robert Symmer; see especially
Robert Symmer, ‘New Experiments and Observations concerning
Electricity’, esp. pp. 340–70, 390–3.
127/7 Reid’s experiments involving potatoes described in his notes from
January and February 1758 speak not only to his interest in agricul-
tural improvement but also to the fact that potatoes were increasingly
a feature of the diet of the lower and middling ranks of Scottish
society during the course of the eighteenth century. As T. C. Smout
has pointed out, potatoes had been cultivated as a food crop for
the Scottish nobility since the seventeenth century; T. C. Smout, A
History of the Scottish People, 1560–1830, pp. 251–2.

6/V/20: Mr Epinus
127/18 Reid’s summary of F. U. T. Aepinus’ account of the electrical prop-
erties of the tourmaline crystal were almost certainly taken from
Aepinus’ paper published in 1758, ‘Mémoire concernant quelques
nouvelles expériences électriques remarquables’. On p. 106 Aepinus
mentions the Dutch name ‘Aschentrekcer’ noted by Reid. But this
detail is not recorded in the digest of Aepinus’ essay that appeared
in the supplement to the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1758; see Anon.,
‘An Account of the Surprizing Electrical Qualities of a Precious
Stone, Found in the Island of Ceylon’.
127/22 Aepinus, ‘Mémoire concernant quelques nouvelles expériences
électriques remarquables’, p. 106.
127/26 Aepinus, ‘Mémoire concernant quelques nouvelles expériences
électriques remarquables’, p. 106.
127/31 Aepinus, ‘Mémoire concernant quelques nouvelles expériences
électriques remarquables’, pp. 111–12.

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 214 Editorial Notes

128/3 Aepinus, ‘Mémoire concernant quelques nouvelles expériences

électriques remarquables’, pp. 113–15.
128/5 Aepinus, ‘Mémoire concernant quelques nouvelles expériences
électriques remarquables’, pp. 115–16.
128/6 Giovanni Carafa, Duca di Noja, Lettre du Duc de Noya Carafa sur
la tourmaline, a Monsieur de Buffon (1759). The authorship of this
work is uncertain. R. W. Home suggests that even though Giovanni
Carafa, the Duca di Noja, was an aristocratic man of science from
Naples who was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1759, much
of the Lettre was written by the French natural historian Michel
Adanson, who was an associate of the noted French electrician
Jean Antoine Nollet; see Home’s editorial introduction to F. U. T.
Aepinus, An Essay on the Theory of Electricity and Magnetism
(1759), p. 94.
128/20 Carafa, Lettre du Duc de Noya Carafa sur la tourmaline, esp. pp.
5–6, 33–4.

Part Six: Chemistry

7/III/6: Of Heat
129/22 Compare Reid’s discussion of heat in an undated manuscript titled
‘Of Secondary Qualities’, AUL, MS 2131/2/III/3. See also AUL,
MSS 2131/6/I/5; 2131/7/II/4, fol. 2v; 2131/7/II/18; Reid, Inquiry,
pp. 42–3, 54–5; and Reid, Intellectual Powers, pp. 200–11. Joseph
Black made a similar distinction between heat as a property of bodies
and heat as a sensation; Joseph Black, Lectures on the Elements of
Chemistry, Delivered in the University of Edinburgh, by the Late
Joseph Black, M.D. (1803), vol. I, pp. 22–3. Reid’s formulation of
the distinction in the Inquiry was later used in Adair Crawford, Ex-
periments and Observations on Animal Heat, and the Inflammation
of Combustible Bodies (1779), p. 1. For an earlier example of the
distinction, see Chambers, Cyclopædia, s.v. ‘Heat’, vol. I, pp. 223–4.
130/9 One possible source for at least some of the material in this para-
graph is the entry on heat in Chambers, Cyclopædia, s.v. ‘Heat’, vol.
I, pp. 223–8; see also Chambers, Cyclopædia, s.v. ‘Potential’, vol.
II, p. 851. In herbals and pharmacopoeias of the early eighteenth
century, the efficacy of nettles as a herbal remedy was attributed to
the fact that they were ‘hot’ and ‘dry’; see, for example, Nicholas

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