RATE OF TRANSMISSION OF CUREENT. 203 



current, nerve cannot be a mere conductor of elec- 

 tricity, and that nerves after death are as good con- 

 ductors of electricity as during life, and that frozen 

 nerves conduct electricity, though they will not trans- 

 mit nervous energy. These objections are considered 

 by many to be fatal to the idea that nerve force is 

 after all only electricity. But a little consideration on 

 the part of those who argue thus, would have con- 

 vinced them that the facts above referred to are as 

 easily explained upon the electrical as upon any other 

 hypothesis of nerve action. 



Little can be gained from the argument that a bit 

 of nerve that has long been dead conducts electricity 

 as well as a nerve just removed from a living animal ; 

 for neither are much better or worse conductors than 

 some other tissues of the body. We must remember 

 that in nature the thing that actually transmits the 

 nerve current is the axis cylinder alone, but that in 

 our experiments, we send comparatively strong cur- 

 rents through the white substance of Schwann and 

 axis cylinders indiscriminately. The current deranges 

 the axis cylinders, and of course seriously damages the 

 delicate distal ramifications of the nerve fibres, § 230. 

 No one who has seen and studied the ultimate rami- 

 fications of nerve fibres in tissues, will suppose for a 

 moment that anything conclusive will be learnt con- 

 cerning the action of nerves, by sending powerful 

 electrical currents through damaged nerve trunks. 



252. Fallacy of the argument deduced from the 

 rate at which the nerve-current travels. — It has been 

 said that the difference in the rate at which nerve 

 energy and electricity travel, is enough to convince 

 us that these two currents are not of the same nature. 

 But the comparison as it has been instituted is not 

 fair. Electricity as it travels along a copper wire has 

 been contrasted with nerve energy (electricity) as it 

 travels along a moist fibrous cord. No wonder that 

 the rate at which the nerve current travels along the 



