and on the probable Nature of the Nerve Current. 181 
impair or destroy their conducting power. Dr. Rutherford has 
remarked that the nerves of a weak animal conduct faster than 
those of a strong one. “ The velocity is so great in this case that 
it may he scarcely measurable,” a fact which probably depends upon 
the circumstance that the conducting tissue is more moist. In 
weak animals the masses of bioplasm are much more abundant than 
in strong ones, and the tissues contain a large quantity of fluid. 
The axis cylinder participates in this change, and in this way the 
remarkable irritability manifested may be accounted for. 
Again, it has been argued that because the irritability of a nerve 
can be destroyed by the electrical current, nerve cannot be a mere 
conductor of electricity, and that nerves after death are as good 
conductors of electricity as during life, and that frozen nerves con- 
duct electricity, though they will not transmit nervous energy. 
These objections are considered by many to be fatal to the idea that 
nerve force is after all only electricity. But a little consideration 
on the part of those who argue thus, would have convinced them 
that the facts above referred to are as easily explained upon the 
electrical as upon any other hypothesis of nerve action. 
Little can be gained from the argument that a bit of nerve that 
has long been dead conducts electricity as well as a nerve just re- 
moved from a living animal ; for neither are much better or worse 
conductors than some other tissues of the body. We must remem- 
ber that in nature the thing that actually transmits the nerve 
current is the axis cylinder alone, but that in our experiments we 
send comparatively strong currents through the white substance 
of Schwann and axis cylinders indiscriminately. The current de- 
ranges the axis cylinders, and of course seriously damages the deli- 
cate distal ramifications of the nerve fibres. 
No one who has seen and studied the ultimate ramifications of 
nerve fibres in tissues, will suppose for a moment that anything con- 
clusive will be learnt concerning the action of nerves by sending- 
powerful electrical currents through damaged nerve trunks. 
Fallacy of the Argument deduced from the Bate at which the 
Nerve Current travels. 
It has been said that the difference in the rate at which nerve 
energy and electricity travel, is enough to convince us that these 
two currents are not of the same nature. But the comparison as it 
has been instituted is not fair. Electricity as it travels along a 
copper wire has been contrasted with nerve energy (electricity) as 
it travels along a moist fibrous cord. No wonder that the rate at 
which the nerve current travels along the nerves should be very 
slow as contrasted with the rate at which electricity traverses a 
copper wire, but such a fact by no means proves that nerve energy 
