As far as electricity has been applied for medical purposes, it has
been almost exclusively Faraday's electricity. You have noticed
those lines of wire which cross the streets of London. It is
Faraday's currents that speed from place to place through these
wires. Approaching the point of Dungeness, the mariner sees an
unusually brilliant light, and from the noble phares of La Heve the
same light flashes across the sea. These are Faraday's sparks
exalted by suitable machinery to sunlike splendour. At the present
moment the Board of Trade and the Brethren of the Trinity House, as
well as the Commissioners of Northern Lights, are contemplating the
introduction of the Magneto-electric Light at numerous points upon
our coasts; and future generations will be able to refer to those
guiding stars in answer to the question. What has been the practical
use of the labours of Faraday? But I would again emphatically say,
that his work needs no such justification, and that if he had
allowed his vision to be disturbed by considerations regarding the
practical use of his discoveries, those discoveries would never have
been made by him. 'I have rather,' he writes in 1831, 'been desirous
of discovering new facts and new relations dependent on
magneto-electric induction, than of exalting the force of those
already obtained; being assured that the latter would find their
full development hereafter.'

In 1817, when lecturing before a private society in London on the
element chlorine, Faraday thus expressed himself with reference to
this question of utility. 'Before leaving this subject, I will point
out the history of this substance, as an answer to those who are in
the habit of saying to every new fact. "What is its use?"
Dr. Franklin says to such, "What is the use of an infant?" The answer
of the experimentalist is, "Endeavour to make it useful." When Scheele