VOL. LIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 683 



nated longissimi dorsi by anatomists. These, when almost all the other muscles 

 of the body were loose, remained tense and hard ; and by drawing the loins up 

 towards the shoulders, continued the arch of the spine before mentioned. As 

 the patient was so much emaciated, these muscles might be traced, on each side 

 of the spine, from their origin to their insertion; and for a considerable time 

 after she was in other respects recovering, these felt hard like twisted cords. At 

 length however, by directing the electricity through them, and the parts near 

 them, in a very liberal quantity, these likewise gave way, and became as loose as 

 any other muscles of her body. 



In proportion as a matter is extraordinary, the proofs to support its reality 

 should be extraordinary. That excellent maxim, ' nil temere credere,' should 

 never be lost sight of in our inquiries, otherwise novelty and the love of the 

 marvellous will be apt to mislead us. On the other hand, the indulgence of an 

 extravagant pyrrhonism may prove equally detrimental in every endeavour to ex- 

 tend the bounds of science. It may prevent the giving due weight to matters of 

 real information, and hinder their being made useful. For his part, he should 

 think it an indignity offered to the r. s. to lay before them any extraordinary 

 phenomenon, which was supported only by a slight degree of evidence. On the 

 contrary, when a number of concurrent circumstances tend to establish a fact, 

 we ought not in a certain degree to refuse our assent to it, though somewhat out 

 of the common course. Thus m the present case ; when an unusual disease of 

 several months' continuance, and when the patient was supposed to be reduced 

 to the last extremity; when medicines and applications of every kind, celebrated 

 by the ablest writers and practitioners both ancient and modern, had been tried 

 with little or no effect, at least with regard to the rigidity; when during a course 

 of electrizing no medicines or applications of any kind were made use of; when 

 likewise during this course, the patient voided no worms, had no purgations, 

 eruptions on the skin, or kindly imposthumations, which might have been con- 

 sidered as critical discharges, and to have brought about the cure; when none 

 of these things happened, and the patient under electrizing only, and that at a 

 very severe season of the year, had been restored to perfect health, he could not 

 refuse his assent in believing it effected by the power of electricity. That so 

 active a principle, when properly directed to the diseased parts, should have im- 

 portant effects, no one could doubt who had been in the least conversant with it. 

 Though at the same time he confessed being well apprised of the salutary effects 

 of warm weather in restoring a more perfect motion to torpid limbs, that had 

 the electrizing been begun in March, and continued to the end of May, though 

 attended with the same success as in the present instance, he could not have sup- 

 pressed his doubts of the warm weather greatly contributing to it. But as this 



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