318 BENJ. PIKE'S, JR. DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE. 



A wooden or me- 

 tal point is sometimes 

 used ; by this a gen- 

 tle stream of electri- 

 city, called the elec- 

 trical aura, or breeze, 

 is given to or taken 

 from a patient, ac- 

 cording as the point 

 is held in the hand 

 of the operator, the 

 patient being on the 

 electrical stool, or at- 

 tached to the glass- 

 handled flexible tube, the patient being on the ground, or 

 rather not insulated. These simple instruments, with the 

 exception of a brass ball at the end of it, are all that 

 are necessary for the administration of the electric fluid, 

 except when shocks are to be given. In this case a Leyden 

 jar is indispensable. -Any Leyden jar may be used, but 

 the one shown and described beneath, is most convenient 

 for medical purposes. 



Medical Jar. (Fig. 374.) The medical jar here repre- 

 sented, A c, is a bottle of about a quart in capacity, re- 

 presented in the cut as hanging from the projecting knob of 

 the prime conductor of a machine, and having other appa- 

 ratus attached to it. It is like an ordinary Leyden jar, 

 covered and lined to a certain height with tin foil. A 

 wooden cap is fitted to it with- a hole just admitting a glass 

 tube. The tube reaches below to within two inches of the 

 bottom, and projects upwards above the cap about three 

 inches. If is also lined and covered with tin-foil, so placed 

 that rather more than an inch of the glass is left uncovered 

 at the lower end, and about two inches at the upper end. 

 The tube is cemented to the top of the bottle, and a smaller 

 cap cemented on the top of the glass tube ; but before this 

 last is cemented on, three holes are drilled in it ; one for a 

 hook wherewith to suspend the phial from the conductor, 

 the two others are to be left open ; one of them to admit a 

 wire to touch the inner coating of the tube, the other a 

 second wire, sufficiently long to reach to the coating of the 

 phial these are shown in the cut at A and B. A wire is 



