100 Notice of some Recent [Feb. 



current or half section of the conducting wire the tempera- 

 ture is trebled. 



4. When wires of different conducting powers were alter- 

 nated and employed to convey the electric current, he found 

 that when the negative current passed from a good into a 

 worse conductor, the greatest elevation of temperature 

 occurred, as from copper to iron, lead, or tin. The con- 

 trary took place with the positive current. When the 

 negative current passed from the zinc to the iron, the 

 temperature was 30°, but in the case of the positive current 

 the elevation was only 13°. 



It is remarkable that the temperature is higher when 

 there is a solution of continuity. Thus, when two copper 

 wires were brought in contact with two plates of bismuth, 

 an elevation of temperature was exhibited, but disappeared 

 on soldering the metals. 



Professor Marianini, # who is actively engaged in philan- 

 thropise endeavours to render electricity beneficial to the 

 cure of the diseases of his fellow creatures, has inferred, 

 from numerous experiments upon frogs, that when their 

 organs of motion are subjected to the influence of an electric 

 current, the electricity accumulates, until by its tendency 

 to flow back, it opposes the current which contributes the 

 new supply, so as to render the action of no effect, or to 

 excite much more feeble contractions than at the commence- 

 ment of the experiment, and that the accumulated electri- 

 city gives rise to a movement in the opposite direction to 

 that proceeding from the electrometer, when the circle is 

 interrupted, and hence, a contraction is induced. A frog 

 was electrified for five hours, the circle was interrupted, 

 and contractions were excited dictinctly under the action of 

 the returning current. 



Upon these principles Marianini was induced to try the 

 effect of galvanism upon a patient affected with palsy, after 

 the failure of other remedies, and having succeeded in pro- 

 ducing a cure, he applied it in several cases with equal 

 benefit. (Ann. de Chim. liv. 366.) 



Into one of these cases I consider it proper to enter par- 

 ticularly. The Countess M. Fenerazoli Sandi, aged 23 years, 

 on the 5th of May 1827, in crossing the room fell on the 



* Ann. de Chim. lvi. 387. 



