Miscellanies. 389 
\ 
By operating upon several warm-blooded animals, I verified in a more 
complete manner the result to which I had already arrived, namely, that 
the intensity of the muscular current is proportionate to the rank of the 
animal in the scale of beings; whilst the duration of this current after 
death varies in an opposite ratio. I wished to study the influence of dif 
ferent gases upon the intensity and duration of the muscular current. 
For this purpose I arranged an apparatus that permitted of my having a 
muscular pile in a certain gaseous medium, with power to open and close 
at pleasure the circuit of this pile with the galvanometer. I operated 
thus in atmospheric air, in oxygen, in very rarefied air, in carbonic acid, 
and in hydrogen. In these different media the muscular pile acted equal- 
ly, both as regards intensity and duration. Hydrogen gas alone present- 
ed a singularity which could not have been anticipated before the experi- 
ment. This singularity is not referable to an action of the gas on the 
muscles, but rather to a phenomenon of secondary polarity, which is veri- 
fied, whatever be the source of the current. The fact is, that on operat- 
ing in this gas with a muscular pile, the deviation remains constant for 
several hours. This nullity of action of the different gases named, upon 
the intensity and duration of the muscular current, plainly proves that the 
origin of this current is in the muscle itself, whether living or taken from 
the animal a short time after death. ‘This same conclusion is rendered 
evident by another experiment. I prepared with very fine intestinal mem- 
brane, a great number of small conical cavities; these cavities I filled 
with fibrine separated from the blood of a recently killed ox; I rapidly 
prepared with these elements a pile that was in appearance similar to my 
piles of half thighs. I obtained no sign of a current from this pile. This 
pile acted with the same result both in oxygen and hydrogen. It is, 
therefore, in the muscle, and consequently in its organization, and in the 
chemical actions which are going on within its very structure, when it be- 
longs to a living or to a recently killed animal, that the cause of the cur- 
rent exists. 
The most curious results to which I have arrived in these latter labors, 
are in relation to the proper current of the frog. I am now able to affirm 
that this current does not belong exclusively to the frog, but that it is man- 
ifested in all the muscles of all animals, provided that these muscles pre- 
sent at their extremities an unequal tendinous termination. All the mus- 
cles that have on one side the tendinous extremity more compacted, more 
condensed than on the other, give the current direction in the muscle from 
the tendinous extremity to the surface of the muscle. I have verified this 
result on all the muscles of the frog, on the muscles of the superior as 
well as those of the inferior limbs; on the muscular masses of the pigeon, 
the rabbit, and the dog. If I have rightly understood the latest anatomi- 
cal labors made upon the structure of muscles, or their relations with the 
tendons and the sarcolema, I cannot hesitate in regarding the proper cur- 
Vol. xxix, No. 2.—July-Sept. 1 50 
