ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 533 



ment. At Glasgow, Ure made some equally noted experiments on the 

 body of a criminal, which had remained on the gallows nearly an 

 hour. One of the poles of a battery of 270 pairs having been con- 

 nected with the spinal marrow, below the nape of the neck, and the 

 other pole touching the heel, the leg, until then bent back, was forcibly 

 thrown forward, almost oversetting one of the assistants, who had a 

 strong hold on it. Placing one of the poles on the seventh rib, and the 

 other on one of the nerves of the neck, the chest rose and fell, and the 

 abdomen underwent the like motion, as in the act of breathing. On 

 touching a nerve of the eyelid at the same time with the heel, the mus- 

 cles of the face contracted, " rage, horror, despair, anguish, and fearful 

 grins, combined in hideous expressions on the dead man's face." At 

 the terrible sight one person fainted, and several were obliged to leave 

 the room. Afterward, by exciting convulsive movements of the arms 

 and fingers, the corpse was made to seem to point at one or another 

 of the spectators. 



Later researches have precisely fixed the conditions of this influ- 

 ence of electricity upon the muscles. Continuous currents, led di- 

 rectly to these organs, produce contractions at the moments of open- 

 ing and of closing the circuits ; but the shock produced on closing is 

 always the strongest. While the continuous current is passing, the 

 muscle remains persistently in a half-contracted state, as to the nature 

 of which physiologists disagree. Influenced by excitements rapidly 

 repeated and prolonged for a short time, the muscles assume a state 

 of contraction and shortening, like that seen in tetanus. In this state, 

 as Helmholz and Marey have shown, the muscle suffers a repetition of 

 very slight shocks. Contraction is the result of the fusion of these 

 elementary vibrations, indistinguishable by the eye, but capable of 

 recognition and measurement by certain contrivances. Currents of 

 induction produce more powerful contractions, but not lasting ones, 

 which are succeeded, if electrization is prolonged, by corpse-like rigid- 

 ity. Muscular contraction effected in such a case is attended by a 

 local rise in temperature, proportioned to the force and length of the 

 electric action. This increase of heat reaches its maximum, which 

 may in some cases be four degrees, during the four or five minutes fol- 

 lowing the cessation of the electric impulse, and is due to the muscu- 

 lar contraction, which always gives rise to disengagement of heat. 



The effect upon the nerves is very complex, and betrayed by move- 

 ments and sensations very variable in intensity. Onimus and Legros 

 state in general its fundamental laws thus : In acting on the nerves of 

 motion, we see that the direct or descending current works more en- 

 ergetically than the other, with the reverse result on the nerves of 

 sensation. The excitability of those nerves of a mixed kind is less- 

 ened by the direct and increased by the inverse current. This is true 

 as to battery-currents, but currents of induction behave differently. 

 "While the sensation called out by the first is almost insignificant, the 



