226 Proceedings of Philosophical Societies. [Mancn, 
plosion in gases; hence, when the wire is very small, explosion 
does not take place, even when the wire becomes red-hot. The 
gas will not explode till it acquires a certain temperature. Now 
in the experiments with the wire sieves this temperature only takes 
place at the top, where the gas is so much dilated with azote and 
carbonic acid gas, that it is incapable of exploding. 
At the same meeting a paper by Dr. Wilson Philips was partly 
read, containing experiments on the nervous influence in secretion. 
In two former papers he had shown that the circulation of the 
blood and the action of the muscles were independent of the 
nervous influence, and that this influence only acted on the 
muscles like any other stimulus, But the case is very different with 
the secretions. Whenever the nervous influence is interrupted the 
secretion is atan end. Several rabbits had the eighth pair of nerves 
divided, and in all of them the parsley, which they ate after the 
operations, remained in the stomachs quite unaltered, and exactly 
resembled parsley chopped small with a knife. The stomach was 
always much distended, and a portion of the food was contained in 
the cesophagus, This was owing to the unsuccessful attempts which 
the animal made to vomit, which always follow the division of the 
eighth pair. The animal soon shows a violent dyspneea, and seems 
to die at last of suffocation. 
Since the experiments of Galvani on animals, it has been a fa- 
vourite opinion of many physiologists that the nervous influence ‘is 
the same with galvanism. ‘To put this to the test of experiment, a 
portion of the hair of a rabbit opposite to the stomach was shaved, a 
shilling tied on it, the eighth pair was divided, and the extremities 
of the nerve coated with tinfoil. These were connected with a gal- 
vanic battery of 47 pairs of plates four inches square. The trough 
was filled with a liquid composed of one part muriatic acid and seven 
parts water. This action was kept up for 26 hours. No dyspnza 
took place, and after death the food in the stomach was found as 
much digested as in the stomach of a healthy rabbit which had eaten 
food at the same time. The smell of the parsley was destroyed, 
and the smell existed which is peculiar to the stomach of a rabbit 
during digestion. This experiment was several times repeated with 
the same result. So that it appears that the galvanic energy is ca- 
pable of supplying the place of the nervous influence, so that while 
under it the stomach digests food as usual. 
Mr. Wilson likewise made a number of experiments to show that 
heat is a secretion from the blood produced by means of the nervous 
energy. When new drawn blood is subjected to the action of the 
galvanic battery, it continues several degrees hotter than blood not 
subjected to the same process. 
It appears to me that Mr. Wilson has gone rather farther than his 
experiments will warrant, when he concludes that the nervous in- 
fluence and galvanism are the same. It is clear that the section of 
the nerve interrupts the nervous influence. Mr. Wilson’s experi- 
