Stroud to Faraday   July 1860¹

When combating the Old Testament narrative of the creation of man², he (Mr. Wild³) adverted to certain chemical experiments which he has alleged were made by you some years since, before audiences, both at Oxford and Cambridge, and also in London, when you demonstrated that life was but electricity, by producing through its agency animalcules, maggots, &c., accompanying those experiments by the remarks addressed to your audiences, as: “Gentlemen, there is life, and, for aught I can tell, man was so created.”⁴ Mr. Wild has always held it (and has related the circumstances to show) that you inferred from your experiments that man could be created or generated, and in all probability was created, in the same modus operandi as by your experiments.

Mr. W., in relating the above, has always added that so unpalatable were your views, and contrary to what was received as orthodox, that the authorities used whose auspices the lectures were given (at which you experimented) had them discontinued.