THE ELECTRICAL SPASM OF DEATH 199 



stances in lowering the death-point it may be mentioned here 

 that the sudden incidence of cold weather will lower it by 

 some 4 or 5 C. Intense fatigue will lower it by as much 

 as 19 C. 



I have already said that this spasm, taking place at the 

 moment of death, is an excitatory response. On this theory 

 it occurred to me that it should also be possible to determine 

 the onset of death by an electrical spasm. It may be well 

 at this point, therefore, to examine some of the conditions 

 under which such a spasm, supposing it to take place, might 

 be displayed most conspicuously. We may suppose a radial 

 organ, with the usual electrical contacts, A and B, to have 

 its temperature raised gradually up to the death-point. 

 The excitatory effect of death may now be expected to 

 cause the galvanometric negativity of a given point. But 

 since these excitatory effects are equal and similar at 

 A and B, they will balance each other, and there will be 

 little or no resultant galvanometric response. In order to 

 obtain a marked resultant effect, then, we must have an 

 organ in which the excitabilities of the two points A and B 

 are different. This difference of excitability, necessary to the 

 exhibition of a resultant response, may be either natural or 

 artificially induced. For the former, we may take a specimen 

 which is not radial, but anisotropic, thus affording us two points 

 of galvanometric contact, possessed of unequal excitabilities. 



We have seen that the inner surface of the petiole of 

 Cucurbita maxima was more excitable than the outer. 

 The same is true of the hollow peduncle of Uriclis lily. 

 There is also a great difference of excitability as between the 

 upper and lower sides of the scale of the bulb of the same 

 lily, in the season of flowering, the concave surface of this 

 scale being more excitable than the convex. Any of these 

 specimens described I find to answer admirably for the purpose 

 of this investigation. 



Taking the petiole of Cucurbita^ then, I divided it longi- 

 tudinally, and rejected one-half, thus obtaining a half-tube, 

 of which the inner concave surface was more excitable than 



