108 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



The experiments were repeated in various ways, and with every precaution 

 that could be thought of, 3 T et the insects still appeared, and that, too, under 

 circumstances apparently highly adverse to the development of animal life. 

 They made their appearance under the surface of liquids in which they 

 could not afterward live, even in fluids that were caustic or absolutely 

 poisonous. Though the solid materials employed had been subjected to a 

 heat greater than that of molten iron, and the solutions used had been 

 poured while boiling into the apparatus, still these strange insects made 

 their appearance; nor did an atmosphere impregnated with chlorine or 

 loaded with muriatic acid gas prove any bar to their production. Similar 

 experiments were afterwards undertaken by Mr. Weeks, of Sandwich, with 

 still greater precaution, if possible, to exclude every exterior element of 

 animal life, but still in the end though a period of twelve or eighteen 

 months sometimes elapsed the insects appeared. 



The publication of these experiments caused a great deal of talk, much 

 of which took the shape of a direct personal attack upon the unlucky phi- 

 losopher. In the true spirit of the middle ages, which long confounded 

 experimental philosophy with impiety, Mr. Crosse was arraigned as an 

 impious man. If he began by creating animals by electrical power no 

 matter of how inferior a sort who could tell where he might stop ? It was 

 a plain usurpation of the functions of Deity. Mr. Crosse must certainly be 

 an atheist. Letters were addressed to him in which he was denounced as 

 "a disturber of the peace of families," and a " reviler of our holy religion." 

 " I have met," says Mr. Crosse, " with so much virulence and abuse, so 

 much calumny and misrepresentation, in consequence of these experiments, 

 that it seems in this nineteenth century as if it was a crime to have made 

 them." In fact, he found himself obliged to come out with a public decla- 

 ration that he was neither an atheist nor a materialist, nor a self-imagined 

 creator, but a humble and lowly reverencer of that great Being, of whose 

 laws those who accused him seemed to have lost sight. 



ON THE USE OF ELECTRICITY FOR PRODUCING LOCAL ANAESTHESIA. 



The application of electricity for producing local anaesthesia, as in tooth- 

 pulling, has been recently made with marked success. The arrangement for 

 using or applying this agent is simple, and consists of the common electro- 

 magnetic machine used in medical electricity, a single cell and pair of plates 

 constituting a Smee's battery, and a small electro-magnetic coil with a bun- 

 dle of wires for graduating the strength of the cm-rent. One end of the 

 thin wire conveying the secondary current is attached to the handle of the 

 forceps, and the other end of it to a metallic handle to be placed in the hand 

 of the patient. The instrument touching the tooth completes the circuit, and 

 the current passes instantaneously. The wire attached to the forceps should 

 be made to pass through an interrupting footboard, so that the continuity 

 of the wire may be made or broken in an instant by a movement of the 

 right foot of the operator. The advantage of this arrangement is, that it 

 allows the instrument to be placed in the mouth without risk of producing a 

 shock in coming in contact with the lips, cheeks, or the tongue, which would 

 interfere with the quiet of the patient. A hole drilled in the end of the left 

 handle of the forceps, and the end of the wire tapered to fit rather tightly, 

 allows the substitution of one pair of forceps for another with scarcely a 

 moment's delay. 



