IS ELECTRICITY LIFE? 483 



chain, we have had the intermittent current, which can be regulated, 

 from a gentle vibratory motion to shocks as powerful as could be 

 gained from a huge or cumbrous battery, and far more powerful than 

 we cared to endure. 



But, if these chains and bands are small, they are not only power- 

 ful but valuable ; and, as money is the great test of value in this emi- 

 nently commercial country, it may be right to state that 10,000 was 

 the penalty inflicted by the Imperial Court of Appeals in Paris, for the 

 infringement of the patent. 



Here, then, we have an electric source divested of all machinery 

 and complication, which could be carried in a cigar-case, and which 

 can be made to furnish both the interrupted and the continuous cur- 

 rent in large quantities. It can be set in action by the simplest means 

 merely a little vinegar and a little water ; and it can be applied not 

 only, as in the old mode, to the extremities, but so as to surround the 

 body of the patient. 



Although we are not continually made sensible of it, men and wom- 

 en are electrical machines. The researches of Matteucci, Dubois-Rey- 

 mond, Rutter, and Faraday, prove that there exists, both in the mus- 

 cles and nerves of human beings and all animals, a natural electricity, 

 independent of mechanical, physical, or chemical actions, exterior or 

 interior ; that this electricity is manifested under the form of closed 

 currents circulating along the muscles or nerves ; that the presence of 

 this free electricity is subordinate to the state of the life of the ani- 

 mal, and disappears with the vital force ; that all parts of the body 

 furnish signs of free positive electricity, especially when the circulation 

 is excited, which signs disappear under the action of cold and in rheu- 

 matic fever ; that quantity currents of low tension are constantly act- 

 ing throughout the vascular system, while currents of high tension, 

 but of inferior quantity, are to be found in the cerebral, spinal, and 

 nervous systems, flowing, in a state of rest of the individual, in direc- 

 tions defined by Nature, from the centre to the circumference. 



The direction of this current is modified by voluntary muscular 

 contractions, but its flow may be obstructed by hostile, poisonous in- 

 fluences. A deficiency of the powers of the body for this electro-gen- 

 eration, or a deficiency in the conducting powers of the vascular and 

 nervous systems, is to be remedied by an artificial supply of electricity, 

 precisely as we go to the fire to warm ourselves. But, precisely as we 

 do not put ourselves on the fire, but take its heat steadily and lasting- 

 ly, so we do not now take a dose of electricity sufficient to shake us to 

 pieces, but, by these chains and bands, keep up and sustain a genial 

 warmth of the parts affected, or of the whole system. Nor is there 

 the slightest inconvenience in wearing: the bands, which are made to 

 fit any part of the body, or to surround it altogether, as is advised in 

 cases of general weakness. Having once been wetted with vinegar- 

 and-water, the action commences, and the moisture of the body is suffi- 



