ELECTRO-PHYSIOLOGY: 



COURSE OF LECTURES BY PROF. CARLO MATTEUCCI, SENATOR, &c. 



TURIN, 1861 



TRANSLATED FOK THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BY C. A. ALEXANDER. 



Lecture I. — Introduction. — Definition of electro-physiology. — Distinction between the 

 electro-physiological effects and the physical and chemical effects of electricity. — Appa- 

 ratus for experiments in electro- physiology. — Measure of muscular power produced by 

 electricity. 



Grateful for the welcome which my auditors extend to this course of lectures, 

 I ascribe their kind reception in great part to the common sentiment by which 

 at present we are all animated. A professor of the University of Pisa, presenting 

 himself as a lecturer at Turin, where at the same time he resides as senator, 

 affords but another and significant token of our national union. 



I do not now propose to entertain you with novelties, but I hope to commu- 

 nicate some portion of the warm interest which I feel in one of the most fertile 

 and attractive sciences of modern times, the science of the 'physico-chemical 

 phenomena of living bodies. It is a science whose discoverers made their first 

 •appearance in Italy, where it has since never ceased to be cultivated — a fact 

 which needs no other proof than the names of Eedi, Fontana, Spallanzani, and 

 Galvani. 



What I have said would have received the assent of that great man, one of 

 the most extraordinary intellects of our century, to whom Lagrange is said to 

 have once made the remark that there could be no further discovery so great as 

 that made by Newton of the law of universal attraction, because there was but 

 one world. There is still another, replied Napoleon — the world of details. This 

 world is peculiarly that of the living organism. 



But let us enter upon the subject. What is electro-physiology ? 



In former times, soon after the discovery of the electrical machine and Ley- 

 den jar, such was the wonder excited by the electrical phenomena that to 

 electricity were attributed the most extraordinary effects on animals and on 

 vegetables. Naturally this wonder was not diminished after the discovery by 

 Galvani of the contractions occasioned in the frog by the passage of electricity. 

 It was then the received belief, though founded on mere imagination, that plants 

 electrified grow much more rapidly and luxuriantly than those not thus treated; 

 that the soil might be fertilized by electricity, and that an amalgam of zinc sub- 

 stituted for the brain of an animal could restore its sensibility and intelligence. 

 These presumptions of false science could not fail, of course, to be dispelled by 

 those rigorous experiments which have led in later times to the foundation of ^ 

 the science of electro-physiology, a part of physics which has established cer- 

 tain laws on well-demonstrated fiicts, and has also advanced some hypotheses 

 which are found to interpret a considerable number of those facts. 



Electro-physiology falls readily under two divisions : the action of electricity 

 on vegetables and animals — an action manifested by appropriate effects relative 

 to the vital organism — and the development of electricity within the living or- 

 ganism itself. 



