The servants of the stomach / by Jean Macé.

  • Macé, Jean, 1815-1894.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The servants of the stomach / by Jean Macé. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and if you remember how those paralytics were cured and enabled to walk by a sudden effort of the will, you must, to a certain extent, be able to account for the wonderful effect the pile is sometimes capable of produc¬ ing. Shock responds to shock ; it may be compared to the winding up of enfeebled springs, though how it is accomplished in either case we are unable to say. It would not, however, do to trust this always. In¬ tervention is dangerous in its nature, and the artificial life which is asked from it, occasionally breaks the springs instead of winding them up. We have heard of more than one example of partial paralysis being ren¬ dered complete by the intervention of the pile. We have also heard of princes whose last remnant of popularity has been destroyed by their appealing for the interven¬ tion of the stranger. The most extraordinary effect that can by any possi¬ bility be made upon the animal machine by currents from a foreign source, is one that can never be of any service. It is precisely that observed by Volta on his dead frogs ; it is the movement produced after death. Experiments have been made on bodies of which the executioner has just severed the head from the trunk. Death having overtaken these individuals whilst in the enjoyment of perfect health, they could be subjected to the currents of the pile while still possessing the neces¬ sary conditions to enable it, the pile, to play the part of the nervous centre which had just been destroyed. What spectacle can be more hideous than that of galvanized corpses playing at life, as it were, half raising themselves, twisting about, beating the air with their limbs, shaken for the last time by false convulsions, and then falling motionless the instant that the source of artificial life is