SUPPOSED REMEDIAL VIRTUES. 119 



ingly, the Tamanac Indians call the gymnotus, in their 

 expressive language, arimna, which means ' something that 

 deprives of motion.' 



The sensation caused bv the feeble shocks of an electric 

 eel appeared to me analogous to that painful twitching 

 with which I have been seized at each contact of two 

 heterogeneous metals applied to wounds which I had made 

 on my back by means of cantharides. This difference of 

 sensation between the effects of electric fishes and those 

 of a Voltaic battery or a Leyden jar feebly charged has 

 etruck every observer; there is, however, nothing in this 

 contrary to the supposition of the identity of electricity and 

 the galvanic action of fishes. The electricity may be the 

 same; but its effects will be variously modified by the dis- 

 position of the electrical apparatus, by the intensity of the 

 fluid, by the rapidity of the current, and by the particular 

 mode of action. 



In Dutch Guiana, at Demerara for instance, electric 

 eels were formerly employed to cure paralytic affections. 

 At a time when the physicians of Europe had great confi- 

 dence in the effects of electricity, a surgeon of Essequibo, 

 named Van der Lott, published in Holland a treatise on 

 the medical properties of the gymnotus. These electric 

 remedies are practised among the savages of America, as 

 they were among the Greeks. We are told by Scribonius 

 Largus, Galen, and Dioscorides, that torpedos cure the head- 

 ache and the gout. I did not hear of this mode of treat- 

 ment in the Spanish colonies which I visited ; and I can 

 assert that, after having made experiments during four hours 

 successively with gymnoti, M. Bonpland and myself felt, till 

 the next day, a debility in the muscles, a pain in the joints, 

 and a general uneasiness, the effect of a strong irritation of 

 the nervous system. 



The gymnotus is neither a charged conductor, nor a 

 battery, nor an electromotive apparatus, the shock of which 

 is received every time they are touched with one hand, or 

 when both hands are applied to form a conducting circle 

 between the opposite poles. The electric action of the fish 

 depends entirely on its will; because it does not keep ita 

 rlectric organs always charged, or whether by the secretion 

 of some fluid, or by any other means alike mysterious to us, 



