"ZINCATIVE" 



wise to attempt to use the proper expressions ? No doubt the 

 confusion is very great, no doubt the main bulk of our electro- 

 physiological literature is totally unintelligible to physicists and 

 to most physiologists. Shall we not, however, lay the foundation 

 of a further mass of worse-confounded confusion by any sudden 

 and unauthorised endeavour to call white white and black black, 

 when for the last twenty or thirty years our leaders have been 

 content to call white black and black white ? 



I hardly like to hazard an opinion, but in presence, on the 

 one hand, of the impossibility of clear thought and speech, with 

 external adjectives for internal relations, and, on the other hand, 

 the mental impossibility of obtaining a sudden reversal of 

 language which is endeared to physiologists by its familiarity 

 and its obscurity, I have adopted a new and barbarous word 

 that avoids the pole name " negative " and the element name 

 " electro-positive," yet implies both names. And for the present, 

 at any rate, awaiting a. better word, or a clearer understanding, 

 I shall, whenever occasion seems to demand the word to make a 

 meaning clear, use the expression sincative, to imply " electro- 



FIG. 7. 



The current of a Daniel cell is A nerve current is from unin- 



from copper to zinc through the jured to injured spot through the 



galvanometer, and from zinc to galvanometer, and from injured 



copper in the cell itself. to uninjured spot in the nerve 



itself. The injured spot is "zinca- 



tive." 



motive like the zinc of a voltaic couple " ; zinc is, as we all 

 know, negative as to its external relation by its pole, and electro- 

 positive as to its internal relation in the cell. Current in the 

 cell is from zinc to copper, in the tissue from more active to less 

 active ; an active tissue-element is electro-positive to a resting 

 tissue element, or (under protest) an active tissue element is 



u 



