162 MEMOIRS OF THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM. 



that when it is touched either by the naked hand or by a rod of iron, gold, silver, 

 or copper, etc., held in the hand, or by a stick of some particular kind of heavy 

 American wood, it communicates a shock perfectly resembling Electricity, which 

 is commonly so violent, that but few are willing to suffer it a second time" (p. 190 

 et seq.). 



This is a fair description of the eel and its shock. The most noticeable error 

 in Bancroft's statement is that the eel is toothless. As soon as it became rather 

 generally known that this fish actually possesses the power of giving a severe 

 shock, it was taken up by quacks of all sorts. Several doctors in the Guianas at 

 once claimed remarkable cures to have resulted from the proper use of the electric 

 eel. One man in particular, Van der Lott of Georgetown, was especially active 

 in urging the use of the electric eel in the treatment of disease. Various other 

 people from time to time have suggested this use and even today there is an idea 

 extant that a piece of the electric eel's skin, worn about the limb affected, will 

 remove rheumatism. Many of the accounts of the electric eel relate strange tales 

 of its uses and properties. The story of Humboldt has become classic. This 

 represented the Indians driving horses into the pool inhabited by the electric eels 

 which were eventually caught as they floated on the surface after having exhausted 

 themselves by shocking the horses. Sachs relates the use of the dried vertebrae 

 of the eel by the Indians in childbirth. He also states that the belief is current 

 that a cock once shocked by an electric eel is capable of shocking anything else for 

 the remainder of the day; that persons chewing tobacco are immune from being 

 shocked; and that a person shocked in the leg is apt to become permanently lame. 



With the advances in science the electric fishes were more carefully investigated 

 and among those who studied the electric eel was Faraday. He gave the first 

 accurate estimate of the power and nature of the shock of this fish after experi- 

 mental work with a 101.6 cm. specimen in captivity at the Adelaide Gallery. 

 He found an average shock from this fish to be equal to that from a battery of 

 fifteen Leyden jars with a surface of 2.258 square meters loaded to their maximum 

 (p. 8, Exp. Researches). 



In 1876-9 Dr. Carl Sachs made a series of observations and experiments upon 

 the electric eel in its natural environment. This work was done in Venezuela on 

 the Rios Apure and Orinoco. Unfortunately, he lost his life shortly after his 

 return to Europe, before he had worked up his valuable data. Bois-Reymond 

 pubHshed his notes in 1881 in " Untersuchungen am Zitteraal" (Leipzig). The 

 following discussion of the electric eel is based in part on this book. 



1. Anatomy. 



There are three pairs of electric organs in E. electriciis, the large electric organs, 

 the secondary organs or the organs of Hunter, and the bundles of Sachs. The 

 large organs and the organs of Hunter both begin a short distance behind the 

 viscera and run nearly the whole length of the fish. The bundles of Sachs are 



