On animal electricity : being an abstract of the discoveries of Emil Du Bois-Reymond / edited by H. Bence Jones.

Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On animal electricity : being an abstract of the discoveries of Emil Du Bois-Reymond / edited by H. Bence Jones. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    positive electricity. In this instance, Volta hit the real truth by accident, for, as we shall see, the phenomena must be explained in a very different way. But soon Volta began to doubt Galvani's theory. He found that except in favourable circumstances, the contractions could only be produced by combinations of heterogeneous metals. By the sapae arrangement he endea- voured to produce muscular contractions in the living human body. He touched the upper and under surface of the tongue with tin and silver respectively, and found when the two metals came in contact, that instead of the anticipated contraction, a peculiar taste was generated. Thus Volta, for the first time, put Sulzer's old experiment in its proper place. In this case, there could be no question of any discharge of electricity, but of some mysterious action caused by a combination of heterogeneous metals, which continued constantly as long as the circuit was closed. Volta accordingly pronounced it as his opinion that most of the galvanic phenomena had nothing whatever to do with animal elec-
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