108 



>s of thought has passed into a proverb. 



til.- notion that any measurable time elapsed between the 

 intliction of a wound ami the fee-ling of the injury would 

 hare been rejected as preposterous thirty years ago. 

 Nervous impressions, notwithstanding the results of 



Haller, were thought t< hi- if not inMantane- 



iil events with tin- . Hence, 



when Helmholt/., in isil, attirmed, as t 

 ment, nervous transmi- iggish 



M5ry few believed him. 



be mail.- in the led me- KM, in. Sound in air nn.\rs 

 at tli- !.!"" fret a sM--oml: .-.>i,nd in water moves 



at tin- i f.-.-t ;l M-.-.iinl; light in 



the rate of is;. (Km mi . ;n.-ityiii free 



iobably at the same rate. Hut the D 

 n it their Mit the rate of only ?' 



a j>roi, r iess which in these quick times might well he 

 regarded a< inordinately slow. 



Your townsman, Mr. (tore, has produced by electrolysis 



a kind of antimony which exhibits an action strikingly 



liatof nervous propagation. A rod of this 



antimony is in such a molet-uhir condition that wh :. 



scratch or heat one end of the rod. the distni !an< -c ; 



gates itself he fore your eyes to the other end, the onward 



i of the disturbance being announced, by the develon- 



iitd fum- . In 



-om.' -ucli way the molecules of the nerves are successively 



overthrown; and if Mr. (Jon* could only devise some means 



of winding up his exhausted antimony, as the nutritive 



. exhausted nerves, the compari.-on would be 



'Mij!ete. The subject may ho summed up, as l>u 



Ui-yuioiid has summed it up, by reference to the case of a 



whale struck by a harpoon in the tail. If the animal 



70 feet long, a second would elapse before the disturb- 



'1 reach the brain, lint the impression at 

 arrival has to diffuse itself and throw tin- brain iir 

 molecular condition ne< -essary to consciousness. Then, 

 and not till then. th<- command to the tail to d. fend itself 

 is shot through th IHIMS. Another second must 



elapse before the command can reach th- that more 



than twosecf>: '.the iiillictmn of the 



i and tl; ilar response of the part wounded. 



,'; '.al K^iiired for the kindlin of consciousness 



