. XII. XIII. STATICAL ELECTRICITY. 225 



Effects of Statical Electricity. I need not dwell long 

 on the effects of statical electricity on animals and vegeta- , 

 bles; for though in old works on physics we find some 

 strange and wonderful effects attributed to it, more accurate 

 observations have completely disproved these statements. 

 An animal or a plant, insulated and electrified by means of 

 the electric machine, has hitherto presented no phenomenon 

 peculiar to them, or different from those offered by inorganic 

 bodies when submitted to the same influence. But this is 

 not the case with respect to the action of the electrical dis- 

 charge on animals. 



Effects of Dynamical Electricity. This subject is of the 

 highest importance, and I am anxious to make you acquaint- 

 ed with every particular regarding it. 



In a memoir, found among the manuscripts of Galvani, 

 and bearing this title, in his own handwriting, Experiments 

 on the Electricity of the Metals, dated 20th September, 

 1786, a fact is mentioned which certainly has had as much 

 influence on the advancement of science, as any of the 

 discoveries of Galileo and Newton. It is, that contractions 

 are excited in a frog, recently killed and prepared according 

 to the usual method of Galvani, when we touch its muscles 

 and nerves with an arc composed of two different metals. 



I shall not stop to explain to you how Galvani interpre- 

 ted these facts, by assuming the existence of an animal 

 electricity which the metallic arc merely discharged. After 

 Volta had demonstrated, by the condensing electrometer, 

 that the two electricities were separated by the effect of the 

 contact of two metals, the idea of Galvani's animal elec- 

 tricfty was abandoned, and it was generally supposed that 

 the contractions observed in the frog, were simply the effects 

 of the passage through the nerves, of electricity developed 

 by the two metals. The two last lectures have taught you 

 in what animal electricity really consists; and you must be 

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