Accumulators of Specific Nervous Energy 291 



and by which it had itself been deposited, namely the 

 continuous electric current. The most important differ- 

 ence consists in this, that an electric accumulator is 

 capable of restoring always only one and the same kind 

 of energy, but not solely such or such intensity of current. 

 It constitutes, for that reason, only a generic potential 

 element; but such accumulators would attain the com- 

 pleteness of specific potential elements receiving and 

 restoring instruments of the greatest delicacy if one 

 could make it possible that each one of them should re- 

 ceive and restore only a single definite intensity of current. 

 The similarities and differences which nerve currents 

 present, in comparison with electric currents, quite war- 

 rant us in assuming in nerve currents some of the 

 properties of electric currents, and in attributing at the 

 same time to the first other properties which the electric 

 do not possess, provided these qualities are not incom- 

 patible with the others. 



It is known that, if we designate by E the electro- 

 motor force of an accumulator or of any electro-chemical 

 generator, it can furnish currents of any intensity i 

 whatever, according to the resistance R of the circuit, 

 according to the equation i=E/R. Thus, even though 

 the terms of motor force, of resistance, of intensity, or 

 more generally of specificity, transferred from electric to 

 nervous currents are very indefinite we may very well 

 venture, nevertheless, as a preliminary trial hypothesis, 

 to attribute to nervous currents as among the properties 

 which they might have analogous to electric currents 

 precisely those contained in this equation. 



As it involves nothing incompatible with the prop- 

 erties expressed by this equation, we may imagine a 

 nervous accumulator, constituted by a given substance 



