MEDICAL ELECTRICITY. 11 



tube with discutieat medicines, and so managing that the elec- 

 tric virtue might enter into the patient. The Bishop presently 

 felt some unusual sensations in his fingers, and " in two minutes 

 his lordship opened and shut his hands, gave a hearty squeeze 

 to one of his attendants, got up, walked, smote his hands toge- 

 ther, helped himself to a chair, and sat down wondering at his 

 own strength, and hardly knowing whether it was not a dream. 

 At length he walked out of the chamber, down stairs, without 

 any assistance, and with all the alacrity of a young man." This 

 and another similar cure, said to have been performed upon an 

 old lady of sixty-one, may well account for the sensation that 

 these experiments seem to have occasioned. The English and 

 French physicians of that day attempted to verify these experi- 

 ments of Pivati, which Winkler, a celebrated electrician of 

 the period, professed to have repeated and found correct. In 

 this attempt, however, they completely failed ; and, after receiv- 

 ing from Winkler some tubes properly prepared, these also were 

 submitted to a fair trial, and the conclusion at which they arri- 

 ved was, that Electricity had no effect in forcing odoriferous 

 effluvia through the substance of glass vessels. The zeal of the 

 Abbe Nollet even carried him into Italy, that he might witness 

 these wonderful performances for himself; but he also came 

 back convinced that the odours were not transmitted through 

 the glass, and that the enclosed drugs had no medicinal effect, 

 although in certain cases of paralysis, &c. the Electricity itself 

 was clearly beneficial. Dr. Bianchini also, of Venice, published 

 an elaborate refutation of these fallacious experiments. To the 

 clearly ascertained fallacy of these experiments of Pivati, and 

 the absurd boasts of electrical empirics, of which mention has 

 already been made, must be attributed the general apathy of 

 more sober-minded practitioners, with regard to the use of 

 Medical Electricity, which, like many other sciences, has suf- 

 fered more from the extravagant eulogium of friends, than from 

 all the attacks of its avowed enemies. 



The discovery of Galvaniiu the year 1791, and the subsequent 

 invention of the Voltaic Pile again aroused the attention of 

 physiologists to the apparent identity of electricity and nervous 



