VOL. XLVI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. %"] 



at Placentia; Pere Garo, at Turin; all these, with very excellent and well con- 

 trived iTiachines, and with a great desire of succeeding, have attempted many 

 times to transmit the odours, as well as the powers of drugs closed (carefully) in 

 tubes or spheres of glass, by electrizing them : all these have attempted to purge 

 a number of persons ; and, according to the accounts they gave, have never 

 gained their point ; or the little success they had, appeared too equivocal to draw 

 any consequences conformable to those M. Pivati had believed to have seen in 

 his experiments. 



I am now then, says Abbe Nollet, as it were, certain of what I began to be- 

 lieve last year, when I printed my Treatise on Electricity, that M. Pivati has 

 been deceived by some circumstance to which he had not given sufficient atteh- 

 tion ; and what makes me believe it more than ever is, that he assured me him- 

 self, that this transftision of odours, and of drugs, through electrized glass ves- 

 sels, had never manifested itself to him but once or twice directly ; I mean by a 

 sensible diminution of bulk, and by such emanations as the smell was capable of 

 perceiving. It is however on this pretended transmission, and with a glass tube, 

 which was cracked from one end to the other, as M. Pivati tells you himself, on 

 this fact, than which nothing can be less certain, that they have established the 

 use and effects of lined tubes, of which they are willing to abate nothing. I 

 am disposed to believe, that the electricity may have cured or relieved distem- 

 pered persons ; but I do not find the proofs of M. Pivati sufficiently strong, or 

 sufficiently certain, to make me conceive that the lined glasses have contributed 

 to these good effects. I think, and M. Verati himself appeared to me pretty 

 much of the same opinion, that if any one has been so happy as to cure disi- 

 tempers by electrifying with glasses containing drugs, all that can be said in fa- 

 vour of these substances is, that they have not hindered the operation of 

 electricity. 



It remains to say, that in these researches I have coveted truth, only for her 

 own sake ; and have no interest in convincing those who may think proper still 

 obstinately to believe, what has been published concerning lined tubes, electrical 

 purgations, instantaneous cures, &c. I do not pretend to make any of my^ 

 opinion, but those who, having read without prejudice what I have here related, 

 may find themselves touched by my reasons : but if after this there can be any 

 one, on whom the love of the marvellous can make a victorious impression, I 

 shall not think ill of them, if they embrace opinions opposite to mine ; qui vult 

 decipi, decipiatur. 



JS2 



