Experiments and Observations

The Dr should have recollected that, in cases of a breach of equilibrium in the distribution of the electrical fluid, all that is required, in order to restore equality of distribution, is, the interposition of a single conducting substance between the place in which it abounds, and that in which there is a deficiency. Whereas, in the phenomena, which he attempts to explain, two conducting substances are necessary to the effect.

When a separated limb is placed under water, one would naturally imagine, that from the perfect communication, which is then formed between the external surfaces of muscles and their nerves, no breach of equilibrium could possibly have place: yet we find Galvani’s phenomena even more readily produced in this situation, than when both muscles and nerves are free from surrounding moisture.

The following experiment was made with a view of rendering the equilibrium of the electrical fluid, in different parts of frogs, as perfect as possible.

The head of a frog having been separated from its body, the latter was laid upon a plate of zinc, held by a person sitting in an insulated chair, which communicated with the prime conductor of an electrical machine. The machine was put in action, and both the person and the frog were electrified positively. In these circumstances, no sparks could be drawn from the frog, by the person holding it: nor could any other electrical appearance take place between them. But, when a piece of silver was passed over different parts of the frog, and, at the same time, brought into contact with the zinc plate, contractions were uniformly excited, differing not in the least, either in strength or frequency, from those which are excited when no artificial electricity is present. The result was precisely the same, when the frog and the person holding it were negatively electrified. This experiment was often repeated. The following experiment was made, in order to see if the effect produced upon a frog, by the passage of artificial electricity from any part of its body, would be increased by employing two different metals as conductors.

A frog was laid, successively, upon a number of different metals, insulated upon glass, and positively electrified by communicating with the prime conductor of an electrical machine. The contractions produced in the frog, thus disposed, by drawing sparks from it, with metals different from those on which it was placed, were not in the least stronger, than those occasioned by drawing similar sparks from it, with conductors of the same metal.

In establishing a communication between two opposite electricities, as, for example, between the two sides of a charged phial, it is matter of indifference to which the conductor is first applied. But it is by no means so, in the case of muscles and armed nerves. For, if one branch of a conductor be applied to the tin-foil arming a nerve, before the other branch has been applied to the muscles, it frequently fails to excite contractions. If first applied to the muscles, this is very seldom the case.

As for the intervals of rest which alternate with the contractions, and which the Dr considers as employed by the nerves, in restoring the breach of equilibrium between the internal surfaces of muscles, and their external; these may possibly admit of a different explanation.

We find them alternating with contractions however excited. It is difficult to conceive, that violent contractions should not derange in some degree, however slight, the intimate organization of muscular fibres: and some time must necessarily elapse before their elasticity can have restored the organized particles, of which they are composed, to that relative situation with respect to each other, which will fit them for again contracting.

This explanation is drawn from observing the following facts. Hearts, taken from the living thorax, and exposed to the action of a strong stimulus, contract vividly for a time, and then cease to be effected by any further application. If they be then removed from the stimulus, and placed for a time either in cold water or in open air, they are observed to regain their susceptibility of the action of stimuli, and again contract. Mr Coleman, in his excellent dissertation on Suspended Respiration, makes an observation, which I have often had opportunity of verifying: that hearts distended with blood, and in which no contraction can be produced, by scratching their surface with a pointed instrument, contract spontaneously, if one of the large vessels, at some distance from them, be cut so as to evacuate some of the blood.

The organization, in this case, is suffered to recover by the removal of the stimulus, (distention) which had deranged it. Even, in the living and entire animal, the heart does not renew its contractions, on the first influx of blood. Some time must elapse, while it recovers from the derangement occasioned by the preceding contraction.

I have repeatedly excited, by means of zinc and silver, contractions in the leg of a frog, whose head had been divided from its body, upwards of three days before. The receptacle, for the electrical fluid, was in these cases removed. Now, either the nerves continued extracting it from the internal parts of muscles, or they did not. If they did, having no longer a receptacle, in which they could deposite their electricity, they must have remained positively electrified; and thus, being in the same state with the outer surface of the muscles, no contraction should, according to the hypothesis, have been excited by the application of the metals. But this is contrary to the fact.

If it be contended, on the other hand, that their pumping power had ceased; then the first application of the metals, which produced a contraction, having restored the equilibrium, which could not afterwards be broken, must have precluded the possibility of further contractions. But this too is contrary to fact.

This argument appears, to me, to do away all support, which the hypothesis may seem to derive from the experiment, before quoted, of applying the metals equally to both sciatic nerves, after one of them had been divided; I may however remark, that the pain necessarily excited by arming a nerve, whose communication with the brain was not interrupted, would fully account for the more rapid exhaustion of the muscles, to which it belonged, compared with such as had not been acted upon by so strong an additional stimulus. As fact, however, is always more satisfactory than argument, I shall relate the following accidental experiment, in proof of the relevancy of the foregoing observation.

Four days after I had divided the crural nerve of a female frog, full of spawn, I found her dead; she had been observed alive the night before. The application of the metals to the leg, whose nerve had not been divided, did not excite the slightest contractions, but on applying them to the leg, in which the nerve had been divided, tolerably strong contractions were excitable, for more than twelve hours after she was found. The spawning season had closed, upwards of a week before this happened, and, as this frog had long been without a male to assist her, it is probable, that her death had been occasioned by the retention of her spawn, as it was found in a very dissolved state. The pain, necessarily preceding such a death, could affect the different parts of the animal, only through the medium of its nerves; and hence the exemption of that part from its effects, to which the communication, by nerve, had been interrupted.

The same observation will apply to that argument, which Dr Valli has drawn, in support of his hypothesis, from the practice of fishermen. By destroying the brain, they take away all sense of pain, and, consequently, preclude that exhaustion which is so notorious for disposing to putridity.