180 Miscellaneous Intelligence. 



M. Zamboni waits for dry weather, when he would prepare 

 paper for the construction of his piles. After having spread the 

 solution of sulphate of zinc on the side of the paper which is 

 not tinned, it is dried, but without separating the water which 

 belongs to the paper ; this side is then covered with vei-y dry 

 oxide of manganese, and the pile being made, particular care is 

 taken to preserve it from the action of the air. The paper should 

 be thin and unsized, if it is otherwise, alcohol should be added to 

 the solution of sulphate of zinc. M. Zamboni has ascertained, 

 from long experience, that the best method of preserving the 

 pile is to enclose it in a tube of flint glass, of a diameter some- 

 what larger than that of the discs, and to pour into the inter- 

 mediate space a warm cement of wax and turpentine. A pile 

 of 2,000 discs, constructed in this way, gives a spark visible by 

 day. M. Zamboni directs also, a perfect insulation of all those 

 parts which require it. — Animlesde Chitnie, xi. p. 190. 



5. Human Electricity. — Dr. Hartmann of Francfort on the 

 Oder, has published in a German Medical Journal, a statement, 

 according to which he is able to produce, at pleasure, an efflux 

 of electrical matter from himself towards other persons. The 

 crackling is to be heard, the sparks seen, and the shocks felt. 

 He has now, it is asserted, acquired this faculty to so high a 

 deo-ree, that it depends on his own pleasure to make a spark 

 issue from his finger, or to draw it from any other part of his 

 body. All this is so strange, that it risks being classed with 

 the reveries of animal magnetism. 



§ 3. Medicine, Anatomy, ^c. 



\. Medical Benevolent Society. — The great number of societies 

 which have been formed in different parts of the kingdom, with- 

 in the last 30 or 40 years for the relief of the Widows and 

 Orphans of Medical Practitioners, must be a durable, and at 

 the same time very honourable, memorial of the good sense and 

 active benevolence of the members of that profession. Though 

 tbft utility of these institutions is indisputable, yet it has, unfor- 



