404 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1747-8. 



renheit's ; but an ingenious and accurate correspondent of the author's at Astrachan 

 informs him, that it not only rises there to this degree frequently, but even to lOO 

 and he has seen it 1034-. Even in the bagnios in Russia, the heat is often equal 

 to 100; it sometimes makes the quicksilver ascend to 108, 110, and to 1 1 6; and 

 yet people not only bear them vifith impunity a few minutes, but often stay half 

 an hour or an hour. [On this subject, see Dr. G. Fordyce's experiments, Phil. 

 Trans, vol. y?-"] 



A New Discovery of the Usefulness of Electricity in Medicine. By John Henry 

 Winkler, Prof, at Leipsic, and F. R. S. N° 486, p. 262, From the Latin. 



Electricity has the property of dividing bodies very subtilly. It carries off with 

 it the parts of those bodies it dissolves, to those places where the electric sparks 

 appear. ,If odorous substances be ever so closely confined in glass vessels, it so 

 divides them, that their exhalations penetrate the glass as easily as magnetism, 

 and flow like a river through the atmosphere of cylinders and chains. The elec- 

 tric matter that issues from the other extremity of the cylinder, gives an aromatic 

 odour to the hand that touches it. Yet the odour communicated does not stop 

 in that part of the body on which the electrical stream has flowed, but with a con- 

 tinued aspiration pervades the whole human frame. Not only are the skin and 

 garments scented, but even the very air breathed by the lungs, the spittle, and 

 the sweat of the person, smell of the aromatics, which are agitated by electricity 

 in the closed vessel. 



All this has been proved by several experiments that have been carefully made. 

 In 1747 Mr. W. filled a glass vessel with water, and dissolved nitre in it. After 

 standing some weeks, the water became very clear, by the heavier parts subsiding. 

 At the latter end of the year he put a wire into this clear water, and joined it to 

 a metal tube suspended on silken threads. He put under this tube sometimes 

 metals, sometimes metallic vessels fiiU of water, in which were glass spheres filled 

 with metalline particles. Then he excited the electricity, the electrical fire touch- 

 ing the bodies underneath, and he repeated the electricity several days. He then 

 found a great quantity of nitrous parts in the metals and vessels, which had been 

 touched by the electric fire under the metal tube. Other vessels, that were placed 

 in the room where the experiments were made, but not touched by the electric 

 matter from the tube, showed no traces of the nitre. Hence it appears that the 

 parts of the nitre are taken out of water by electricity, and conveyed to places 

 touched by the electric fire. 



This conjecture was greatly confirmed the same year by a publication in Italy, 

 by Sig. Jo. Franc. Pivati, on medical electricity; in which a manifest instance of 

 the virtue of electricity was shown on the balsam of Peru; which was so con- 

 cealed in a glass cylinder that, before the application of electricity, not the least 



