116 REPORT—1857. 
electric machine, he did not contemplate going further back than the seventeenth 
century, or commencing with any earlier instrument than Otto Guericke’s sulphur 
globe of 1670. His attention, however, had been incidentally directed to the employ- 
ment of the living torpedo as a remedial agent by the ancient Greek and Roman 
physicians, and he now felt satisfied that a living electric fish was alike the earliest 
and the most familiar electric instrument employed by mankind. In proof of the 
antiquity of the practice, he adduced the testimony of Galen, Dioscorides, Scribonius, 
and Asclepiades, whose works proved that the shock of the torpedo had been used 
as a remedy in paralytic and neuralgic affections before the Christian era. A still 
higher antiquity had been conjecturally claimed for the electric Silurus, or Mala- 
pterurus of the Nile, on the supposition that its Arabic name, raad, signifies thunder- 
fish, and implies a very ancient recognition of the identity in nature of the shock- 
giving power and the lightning force; but the best Arabic scholars have pointed out 
that the words for thunder (raad) and for the electric fish (raa’dd) are different, and 
that the latter signifies the “‘ causer of trembling” or “ convulser”’; so that there 
are no grounds for imputing to the ancient Egyptians, or even to the Arabs, the 
identification of Silurus-power with the electric force. In proof of the generality of 
the practice of employing the living zoo-electric machine at the present day, the 
author referred to the remedial application of the torpedo by the Abyssinians, to 
that of the Gymnotus by the South American Indians, and to that of the recently- 
discovered electric fish (AZalapterurus Beninensis) by the dwellers on the Old Calabar 
River, which, strictly speaking, flows into the Bight of Biafra, but by a looser geo- 
graphical interpretation is held to enter the Bight of Benin. The native Calabar 
women are in the practice of keeping one or more of the fishes in a basin of water, 
and bathing their children in it daily, with a view to strengthen them by the shocks 
which they receive. These shocks are certainly powerful, for living specimens of the 
Calabar fish are at present in Edinburgh, and a single one gives a shock to the hand 
reaching to the elbow or even to the shoulder. The usages referred to appear to 
have prevailed among the nations following them from time immemorial, so that 
they furnish proof of the antiquity as well as of the generality of the practice under 
notice. 
The author concluded by directing the attention of naturalists to the probability 
of additional kinds of electrical fish being discovered, and to the importance of 
ascertaining what the views of the natives familiar with them are in reference to the 
source of their power and to their therapeutic employment. 
MISCELLANEOUS. 
On the Functions of the Human Ear. By Professor H. Cariite, MD. 
Dr. Carlile made some observations on the manner in which sounds are reflected 
by the auricle and external meatus of the human ear, and so caused to fall on the 
membrana tympani. He showed that after reflexion from the surface of the concha, 
and from a cavity formed by the inner surface of the tragus, they are received upon 
a third concave surface, or reflector, situated at the upper and back part of the tube, 
where the cartilaginous joins the osseous portion of the meatus, whence they are 
transmitted, some directly to the surface of the membrana tympani, falling upon it 
obliquely, and others to the outer and lower part of the tube, reflected from which 
they fall on the membrana tympani nearly at right angles. The first three reflecting 
surfaces are the chief seats of the sebaceous glands, those appertaining to the second 
and third surfaces secreting the substance called the cerumen, or wax, of the ear, 
distinguished by its yellow colour and bitterness. : This bitter secretion is very pro- 
bably, as it is generally described, a preventive of the ingress of insects, as these are 
not found to enter the tube of the ear even when persons sleep upon the ground in 
places swarming with insects, such as earwigs, &c.; but it is very likely that these 
sebaceous secretions also serve the purpose of a varnish, which, being spread over 
the reflecting surfaces, produces a smoothness, and a regularity of curve, favourable 
to the transmission by reflexion of the pulses of sound in their passage to the mem- 
brana tympani. It is highly probable that slight deafnesses, such as are occasion- — 
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