Andrew Crosse - Scientific Research - Controversy

Controversy

A few months after the 1836 Bristol meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Crosse had been conducting another electrocrystallization experiment when, on the 26th day of the experiment he saw what he described as "the perfect insect, standing erect on a few bristles which formed its tail." More creatures appeared and two days later they moved their legs. Over the next few weeks, hundreds more appeared. They crawled around the table and hid themselves when they could find a shelter. Crosse identified them as being part of genus acarus.

Puzzled by the results, Crosse mentioned the incident to a couple of friends. He also sent the results to the London Electrical Society. A local newspaper learned of the incident and published an article about the "extraordinary experiment" and named the insects Acarus crossii. The article was subsequently picked up elsewhere across the country and in Europe. Some of the readers apparently gained the impression that Crosse had somehow "created" the insects or at least claimed to have done so. He received angry letters in which he was accused of blasphemy and trying to take God's place as a creator. Some of them included death threats. Local farmers blamed him for the blight of the wheat crop and commissioned an exorcism in the nearby hills. Opposition to Crosse was so fanatical and visceral that he had to withdraw to the solitude of his mansion Fyne Court.

Other scientists tried to repeat the experiment. W. H. Weeks took extensive measures to assure a sealed environment for his experiment by placing it inside a bell jar. He obtained the same results as Crosse, but due to the controversy that Crosse's experiment had sparked his work was never published. In February 1837 many newspapers reported that Michael Faraday had also replicated Crosse's results. However, this was not true. Faraday had not even attempted the experiment. Later researchers, such as Henry Noad and Alfred Smee, were unable to replicate Crosse's results. Crosse did not claim that he created the insects; he instead assumed that there were embedded insect eggs in his samples. Later commentators agreed that the insects were probably cheese or dust mites that had contaminated Crosse's instruments.

It has been suggested that this episode was the inspiration for Frankenstein, although this could not have been the case since Crosse's controversial experiments took place almost 20 years after the novel's publication. The idea appears to have originated in the 1979 book The Man Who Was Frankenstein by Peter Haining. Mary Shelley did, however, know Crosse, through a common friend, the poet Robert Southey. Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin attended a lecture by Crosse in December 1814 in London, in which he explained his experiments with atmospheric electricity. Edward W. Cox wrote a report of their visits to Fyne Court to see Crosse's work in the Taunton Courier in Autumn 1836.