132 EULOGY ON ALEXANDER VOLTA. 



that froin the copper ou some other part of the body, a very decided acid 

 taste is the result. To vary the nature of this taste, or to make it alka- 

 line, it is only necessary to reverse the order of the wires. 



The sense of sight does not escape the action of this protean instru- 

 ment. Here the phenomenon will appear the more interesting from the 

 fact that the luminous sensation is excited without the necessity of 

 touching the eye. If the end of one of the wires be applied to the fore- 

 head, cheeks, nose, chin, or even the throat, the very moment the ob- 

 server seizes the other wire with his hand he perceives, with his eyes 

 closed, a flash of light whDse intensity and form vary according to the 

 ' part of the face in contact with the conductor. Similar combinations 

 create in the ear sounds, or, rather, peculiar noises. 



It is not alone ou healthy organs that the pile acts. It excites or 

 appears to revive those in which life seemed altogether extinct. In one 

 instance, by the combination of the two wires, the muscles of a head, 

 severed from the body, evinced contortions so frightful that the spec- 

 tators fled terrified. In another the body of the victim half arose, its 

 hands shaking, and striking the nearest objects, and raising weights of 

 several pounds. The pectoral muscles imitated the respiratory move- 

 ments ; and, in a word, every life-like motion was so accurately repro- 

 duced that the question was involuntarily asked whether the experi- 

 mentalist was not guilty of a culpable act, whether he was not adding 

 cruel sufferings to those just inflicted on the criminal by the hand of 

 the executioner. 



Insects, also, subjected to these experiments, gave interesting results. 

 The wires of the pole, for example, greatly increased the brilliancy of the 

 glow-worm, restored motion to a dead grasshopper, and made it sing. 



The marvelous efiects of the pile each day acquire a more extended 

 field of action. But I must decline an invitation made me to treat the 

 subject with regard to its medicinal properties and the power it possesses, 

 it is said, of curing certain affections of the stomach and paralysis, for 

 the lack of sufficiently accurate information. I will add, however, that 

 M. Marianini, of Venice, one of the most celebrated physicists of the cen- 

 tury, has recently obtained, in eight cases of severe paralysis, results so 

 completely favorable, by a skillful application of electro-motors, that it 

 would be the grossest negligence on the part of the medical faculty not 

 to give their attention to this means of alleviating human suflering. 



If, laying aside the physiological properties of the pile, we consider it 

 merely as an electrical machine, we shall find ourselves in that depart- 

 ment of science which has been brought to a high degree of perfection 

 by ISickolson and Carlisle, Hisinger and Berzelius, Orested and Ampere, 

 and Davy. 



At first each wire, taken separately, will indicate the ordinary tem- 

 perature, that of the surrounding airj but the moment these wires are 

 brought into contact they will acquire an intense heat. When suffi- 

 ciently attenuated they become incandescent ; still more attenuated, 

 they melt altogether, to the consistency of a liquid, even if they be of 



