author

Francis Penrose

1718–1798

An English surgeon and medical writer, he spent many years practicing in Bicester, Oxfordshire while publishing lively 18th-century works on the body, magnetism, and electricity. His books show a curious mind eager to explain how natural forces and human health might fit together.

1 Audiobook

A Treatise on Electricity Wherein its various phænomena are accounted for, and the cause of the attraction and gravitation of solids, assigned. To which is added, a short account, how the electrical effluvia act upon the animal frame, and in what disorders the same may probably be applied with success, and in what not.

A Treatise on Electricity Wherein its various phænomena are accounted for, and the cause of the attraction and gravitation of solids, assigned. To which is added, a short account, how the electrical effluvia act upon the animal frame, and in what disorders the same may probably be applied with success, and in what not.

by Francis Penrose

About the author

Born in 1718, Francis Penrose was an English surgeon who practiced for many years at Bicester in Oxfordshire. Alongside his medical work, he wrote a series of books and essays that explored physiology and the natural sciences, reflecting the wide-ranging curiosity of the eighteenth century.

His published works included A Physical Essay on the Animal Oeconomy, An Essay on Magnetism, and A Treatise on Electricity. In them, he tried to account for subjects such as blood circulation, magnetic effects, and electrical phenomena in a clear, explanatory way, blending practical medical interests with larger scientific questions.

Penrose died on 17 January 1798. Though not among the best-known writers of his period, he offers a fascinating glimpse of a time when surgeons, experimenters, and authors often moved easily between medicine and natural philosophy.