PART THE SECOND.
ON THE INFLUENCE WHICH GALVANISM HAS ON THE VITAL POWERS.
To conduct an energetic fluid to the general seat of all impressions; to distribute its influence to the different parts of the nervous and muscular systems; to continue, revive, and, if I may be allowed the expression, to command the vital powers; such are the objects of my researches, and such the advantages which I purpose to derive from the action of Galvanism.
The discovery of the Galvanic pile by the celebrated Volta has served as a guide to enable me to obtain the most interesting results; and to these I have been conducted by numerous researches and a long series of experiments. I have examined the whole range of nature, and the grand family of animals has afforded me the means of making observations, highly interesting to physiology, on the whole œconomy of the vital powers. My experiments on this subject I shall divide into two Sections.
SECTION I.
Galvanism applied to various quadrupeds, birds, and other warm-blooded animals.
EXPERIMENT I.
The head of an ox, recently killed, was subjected to the action of a pile ([Plate II.] fig. 1.) composed of fifty plates of copper and zinc, separated, as usual, by small pieces of pasteboard moistened with a solution of muriate of soda. Having moistened one of the ears with the same solution, by means of a syringe, I introduced into it one extremity of a metallic wire. I then formed an arc with this wire to the summit of the pile, and by means of another wire made a communication between the bottom of the pile and the nostrils. When this apparatus was applied, the eyes were seen to open, the ears to shake, the tongue to be agitated, and the nostrils to swell, in the same manner as those of the living animal, when irritated and desirous of combating another of the same species.