BERTHOLON, Pierre. De l’électricité des végétaux. Ouvrage dans lequel on traite de l’électricité de l'atmosphère sur les plantes …

The Invention of the Electro-Vegetometer

BERTHOLON, Pierre. De l’électricité des végétaux. Ouvrage dans lequel on traite de l’électricité de l'atmosphère sur les plantes … Paris: P.F. Didot jeune. 1783.

8vo. Contemporary mottled calf, spine with raised bands, spine lettered directly in gilt and tooled to a floral design, marbled endpapers, red edges green silk place-marker; pp. xvi, 468, [ii]; 1 folded table, 3 copper-engraved folded plates; hinges tender and sometime repaired, upper board a little loose but holding, spine cracked with tailband wanting; occasional spotting; a very good copy; twentieth-century bookplate of H.F. Bienfait, plant physiologist at the University of Amsterdam.

First edition of what is generally regarded as the earliest substantial investigation into the effects of electricity on plant growth, illustrated with folding plates depicting Bertholon’s electro-vegetometer and experimental apparatus.

Physicist and natural philosopher Pierre Bertholon (1741–1800) was among the most active French investigators of atmospheric and applied electricity in the later eighteenth century. His reputation in the field was such that a chair of physics was created expressly for him at the Société Royale des Sciences de Montpellier in 1784. There he devoted much of his work to the practical application of electrical phenomena across medicine, agriculture, and natural philosophy. His later lectures remained sufficiently popular that he continued to teach throughout the Revolutionary period, and by 1797 was attached to the École Centrale de Lyon, where he remained active until his withdrawal from public life shortly before his death in 1800. De l’électricité des végétaux is the first of Bertholon’s works on electricity, followed by De l’électricité du corps humain dans l’état de santé et de maladie (1786) and De l’électricité des météores (1787).

The present work, which spans the disciplines of physics and botany, cemented Bertholon’s place as one of the most notable electrical experimentalists. Building upon widespread Enlightenment observations that vegetation appeared to flourish following thunderstorms, he proposed that atmospheric electricity might be deliberately harnessed and regulated for agricultural benefit. To this end he devised the electro-vegetometer, among the earliest purpose-built instruments designed to collect, conduct, and distribute atmospheric electrical charge through cultivated soil and surrounding air. Particularly notable are the engraved plates illustrating Bertholon’s apparatus, among the earliest visualisations of instruments specifically designed for agricultural electrical experimentation. Through sustained electrical exposure, Bertholon reported accelerated plant growth, improved yields, and even the suppression of agricultural pests.

Although Bertholon’s claims were soon subject to scrutiny and sceptical replication attempts, most notably by Jan Ingenhousz, the discoverer of photosynthesis, whose trials with similar apparatus are said to have resulted in crop failure, the work represents an important step in the early understanding and application of electricity to biological systems.

Bibliotheca chemico-mathematica 368.

SKU: 2124908