ON PHYSIOLOGICAL PHENOMENA. 219 



removed from the influence of the living principle, it is 

 quite evident that the electricity here is only secondary 

 to some more important power. Matteucci has en- 

 deavoured to show that nervous action is intimately 

 connected with electric excitation, and that electricity 

 may be made a measurer of nervous irit ability.* There 

 can be no doubt that a peculiar susceptibility to excite- 

 ment exists in some systems, and this is very strikingly 

 shown in the disturbances produced by electric action ; 

 but in the experiments which have been brought for- 

 ward we have only the evidence that a certain number 

 of muscular contractions are exhibited in one animal by 

 a current of electricity, giving a measured effect by the 

 voltameter, which are different from those produced 

 upon another by a current of the same power. An 

 attempt has recently been made by Mr. A. Smee to 

 reduce the electrical phenomena connected with vitality 

 to a more exact system than had hitherto been done. 

 We cannot, however, regard the attempt as successful. 

 The author has trusted almost entirely to analogical 

 reasoning, which is in science always dangerous. f In 

 the development of electricity during the operation of 

 the vital force, we see only the phenomena produced 

 by the action of any two dissimilar chemical compounds 



it belongs in the living animal, and we can substitute for it one of 

 those principles without disturbing the functions of life. 



" Late discoveries have been gradually evincing how far more 

 extensive than was supposed, even a few years ago, is the domi- 

 nion of electricity. Magnetism, chemical affinity, and (I believe 

 from the facts stated in the foregoing paper, it will be impossible 

 to avoid the conclusion) the nervous influence, the leading power 

 in the vital functions of the animal frame, properly so called, appear 

 all of them to be modifications of this apparently universal agent ; 

 for I may add we have already some glimpses of its still more ex- 

 tensive dominion." 



Eefer to Dr. Reid's papers. 



* Electro physiological Researches : by Signor Carlo Matteucci ; 

 Phil. Trans. 1845, p. 293, and subsequent years. 



f Electro-Biology: by Alfred Smee, Esq. 



