288 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1793. 



almo9t all animals. It appears proved indeed by these experiments, that the 

 electric fluid has a continual tendency to pass from one part to another of a 

 living organized body, and even of its lopped members, while they retain any 

 remains of vitality ; that it has a tendency to pass from the nerves to the mus- 

 cles, or vice versa, and that muscular motion is due to a like transfusion, more 

 or less rapid. Indeed it seems that there is nothing to be objected either to the 

 thing itself, or to the manner in which Mr. G. explains it by a kind of discharge 

 similar to that of the Leyden phial. 



Mr. G. following up the idea he had formed, after his experiments, and to 

 follow in every point the analogy of the Leyden phial and the conducting arc, 

 pretends that there is naturally an excess of the electric fluid in the nerve, or in 

 the interior of the muscle, and a correspondent defect in the exterior, or vice 

 versa ; and he supposes consequently that one end of that arc ought to com- 

 municate with a nerve which he considers as the conducting thread, or knob of 

 the phial, and the other end with the exterior of the muscle. But had he but a 

 little more varied the experiments, as I have done, says Mr. Volta, he would 

 have seen that this double contact of the nerve and muscle, this imaginary cir- 

 cuit, is not always necessary. He would have found, as I have done, that we 

 can excite the same convulsions and motions in the legs, and the other members 

 of animals, by metallic touchings, either of 2 parts of a nerve only, or of 2 

 muscles, and even of different points of one simple muscle alone. 



It is true that we succeed not quite so well in this way as the other; and that 

 in this case we must have recourse to an artifice, which consists in employing 2 

 different metals ; which is not necessary in experimenting after Galvani's method, 

 at least while the vitality in the animal, or in its amputated members, is in full 

 vigour : but in short, since with the armings of different metals applied, either 

 to the nerves only, or to the muscles alone, we succeed in exciting contractions 

 in these, and the motions of the members, we ought to conclude that if there 

 are cases (which appears however very doubtful) in which the pretended discharge 

 between tlie nerve and muscle is the cause of muscular motion, there are also 

 circumstances, and more frequently, in which we obtain the same motions, by a 

 quite different way, a quite different circulation, of the electric fluid. Yes, it 

 is a quite different sort of method of the electric fluid, of which we ought rather 

 to say we disturb the equilibrium, than restore it, in that which flows from one 

 part to another of a nerve, or muscle, &c., as well interiorly by their conduct- 

 ing fibres, as exteriorly by means of applied metallic conductors, not in con- 

 sequence of a respective excess or defect, but by an action pro])cr to these 

 metals, when they are of diff^'erent kinds. It is thus, says Mr. Volta, that I 

 have discovered a new law, which is not so much a law of animal electricity, as 

 a law of common electricity ; to which ought to be attributed most of the phe- 



