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III. An account of some experiments on the Torpedo. By Sir Humphry Davy, 



Bart. F.R.S. 



Read November 20, 1828. 



Amidst the variety of researches which have been pursued respecting the 

 different forms and modes of excitation and action of electricity, it is sur- 

 prising to me that the electricity of living animals has not been more an object 

 of attention, both on account of its physiological importance, and its general 

 relation to the science of electro-chemistry. 



In reading an account of the experiments of Walsh, it is impossible not to 

 be struck by some peculiarities of the electricity of the organ of the Torpedo 

 and Gymnotus ; such as its want of power to pass through air, and the slight 

 effects of ignition produced by the strongest shocks : and though Mr. Caven- 

 dish, with his usual sagacity, compared its action to that of a battery weakly 

 charged, when the electricity was large in quantity but low in intensity, yet 

 the peculiarities which I have just mentioned are not entirely in harmony with 

 this view of the subject. 



When VoLTA discovered his wonderful pile, he imagined he had made a per- 

 fect resemblance of the organ of the Gymnotus and Torpedo ; and whoever has 

 felt the shocks of the natural and artificial instruments, must have been con- 

 vinced, as far as sensation is concerned, of their strict analogy. After the dis- 

 covery of the chemical power of the Voltaic instrument, I was desirous of 

 ascertaining if this property of electricity was possessed by the electrical organs 

 of living animals ; and being in 1814 and 1815 on the coast of the Mediterra- 

 nean, I made use of the opportunities which offered themselves of making ex- 

 periments on this subject. Having obtained in the Bay of Naples, in May 

 1815, two small Torpedos alive, I passed the shocks through the interrupted 

 circuit made by silver wire through water, without being able to perceive the 

 slightest decomposition of that fluid ; and I repeated the same experiments at 



