Bache.] °* [April 17, 



of those treated with the looped wire it was only the residual 

 force, which the wire did not carry, that they encountered. That 

 under these conditions the wire does not cany all the electricity 

 is shown in the forthcoming description of experiments, in which 

 the work of killing bacteria was successfully accomplished with 

 looped wire passing through fluid media, and carrying only a 

 very small force, but for a considerable time. With so much 

 electro-motive force as I used — one hundred and ten volts — I 

 could not allow the discharge through the micro-organisms to be 

 more than momentary, else they would have been destroj-ed for 

 certain by the concentrated products of electrolysis. 



Two main conclusions seemed to me from the beginning of my 

 experiments to be justifiable. The first of these was that, inas- 

 much as protozoa have no nervous system, and do not seem to 

 be injuriously affectible by the electric current (barring its action 

 under conditions such as generate heat almost exclusively), we 

 are accustomed to think erroneously of the current as capable 

 of affecting and endangering all sensation and life, solely because 

 of our own possession, and knowledge of the possession among 

 other animals, of a nervous organization upon which stress may 

 be put by the current. It seemed to me that the last experiment 

 proves what is currently believed, that an animal protoplasmic 

 organism has, ipso facto of its being protoplasmic, no nervous 

 system. The second conclusion at which I arrived was that, if 

 protozoa of the kind with which I had dealt are not easily killed 

 by the electric current, it would be hopeless to think of destin- 

 ing schizomycetes, except by a force which, for the practical pur- 

 poses that I had in view, it is impossible to apply to them, espe- 

 cially as, in the pleomorphic forms assumed b}- some of them, it 

 is notorious that thej' possess latent vitalit}* difficult to extirpate. 



I am still inclined to hold to the first conclusion, as justifiable 

 from my experiments as far as they have even now gone, that 

 animal micro-organisms, submerged in water or any other liquid, 

 are not susceptible to injury from electric current approaching 

 in force the highest that I used (which may be regarded as pro- 

 digious when the minuteness of the organisms attacked by it is 

 taken into consideration), and that perhaps they are not suscept- 

 ible to injury under those conditions from any current, however 

 high. But, as to my first conclusion, I have since found myself, 

 upon leading the work of Dr. Griffiths, egregiously in error 



