34<2 DISCOURSE ON THE STUDY 



those arising from electricity, that they could hardly 

 be referred to a different source, though besides the 

 shock neither spark nor any other indication of elec- 

 trical tension could be detected in them. 



(379.) The benumbing effect of the torpedo had 

 been ascertained to depend on certain singularly con- 

 tructed organs composed of membranous columns, 

 filled from end to end with laminae, separated 

 from each other by a fluid: but of its mode of 

 action no satisfactory account could be given; 

 nor was there any thing in its construction, and 

 still less in the nature of its materials, to give 

 the least ground for supposing it an electrical ap- 

 paratus. But the pile of Volta supplied at once the 

 analogies both of structure and of effect, so as to 

 leave little doubt of the electrical nature of the ap- 

 paratus, or of the power, a most wonderful one 

 certainly, of the animal, to determine, by an effort 

 of its will, that concurrence of conditions on which 

 its activity depends. This remained, as it probably 

 ever will remain, mysterious and inexplicable ; but 

 the principle once established, that there exists in 

 the animal economy a power of determining the 

 developement of electric excitement, capable of be- 

 ing transmitted along the nerves, and it being as- 

 certained, by numerous and decisive experiments, 

 that the transmission of Voltaic electricity along the 

 nerves of even a dead animal is sufficient to produce 

 the most violent muscular action, it became an easy 

 step to refer the origin of muscular motion in the liv- 

 ing frame to a similar cause ; and to look to the brain, 

 a wonderfully constituted organ, for which no mode 

 of action possessing the least plausibility had ever 



