ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 165 



quired the human body to be taken at the immediate in- 

 stant after the extinction of life, he believed he would do 

 well, as he relates himself, to take his place beside the 

 scaffold, and under the axe of the law, to receive from the 

 executioner's hand the blood-stained bodies which were the 

 only really suitable subjects for his experiments. In Jan- 

 uary and February, 1802, he availed himself of'the occasion 

 of the beheading at Boulogne of two criminals, whom the 

 government willingly gave up to his scientific inquiry. 

 Subjected to electric action, these bodies presented so 

 strange a sight as to terrify some of the assistants. The 

 muscles of the face contracted in frightful grimaces. All 

 the limbs were seized with violent convulsions. The bodies 

 seemed to feel the first stir of resurrection, and an impulse 

 to spring up. For several hours after decapitation, the 

 vital centres of movement retained the power of answering 

 to the electric excitement. At Glasgow, Ure made some 

 equally noted experiments on the body of a criminal, which 

 had remained on the gallows nearly an hour. One of the 

 poles of a battery of 270 pairs having been connected with 

 the spinal marrow, below the nape of the neck, and the 

 other pole touching the heel, the leg, until then bent back, 

 was forcibly thrown forward, almost oversetting one of the 

 assistants, who had a strong hold on it. Placing one of 

 the poles on the seventh rib, and the other on one of 

 the nerves of the neck, the chest rose and fell, and the ab- 

 domen underwent the like motion, as in the act of breath- 

 ing. On touching a nerve of the eyelid at the same time 

 with the heel, the muscles of the face contracted, " rage, 

 horror, despair, anguish, and fearful grins, combined in hid- 

 eous expressions on the dead man's face." At the terrible 

 sight one person fainted, and several were obliged to leave 

 the room. Afterward, by exciting convulsive movements 

 of the arms and fingers, the corpse was made to seem to 

 point to one or another of the spectators. 



