331 



pile is constantly electrifying itself spontaneously, that its effects seem in- 

 creased, the more they are excited, and are speedily renewed in greater 

 strength, whilst the Leyden phial, once discharged, requires to be elec- 

 trified anew. This loses, moreover, by damp, its electrical properties, 

 whilst those of the pile remain the same, though water is running on all 

 side, and are quenched only by an entire immersion in that fluid. 



If you introduce into a tube filled with water, and hermetically closed 

 with two corks, the extremities of two wires of the same metal, which, 

 at the other extremity, are in contact, one in the summit and one with 

 the base of the galvanic pile, these two ends, when brought within the 

 distance of a few lines, undergo manifest changes, at the moment of touch- 

 ing the extremities of the pile. The wire in contact with the extremity 

 which answers to the zinc, becomes covered with bubbles of hydrogen 

 gas; that which touches the extremity formed by the silver, becomes 

 oxydized. If the ends of the wire dipping into the water, are brought into 

 contact, all effect ceases: there is no disengaging of bubbles on one side, 

 no oxydizement on the other. The plates of zinc and silver become alike 

 oxydized in the pile, but only on the surfaces which touch the moisten- 

 ed pasteboard, and very little, or not at all, on the opposite surfaces, &c. 



Facts so singular could not but awaken the attention of all natural 

 philosophers. Accordingly, there was a great eagerness, every where, 

 to repeat and verify these first experiments, to vary and to extend them, 

 and to rectify the errors into which their authors might have fallen. 

 Lastly, it has been attempted to explain the manner in which the apparatus 

 acts in the production of hydrogen gas and in oxydizement. 



M. Fourcroy ascribes this phenomenon to the decomposition of water 

 by the galvanic fluid, which abandons the oxygen to the wire that touches 

 the positive extremity of the apparatus, then conducts the other gas, in 

 an invisible manner, to the extremity of the other wire, where it allows 

 it to escape ; and this opinion, supported by many experiments, detailed 

 in a Memoir presented to the National Institute, is the most probable of 

 ^11 that have hitherto been suggested*. 



The galvanic pile has been employed, with effect, to produce witli 

 more energy, muscular contraction. If you place in the mouth of an ani- 

 mal, fresh killed, a conductor attached to one of the poles or extremities 

 of the pile, and insert into the rectum, the conductor connected with the 

 other extremity, you observe contractions so strong, that the whole body 

 of the animal quivers and is agitated, the eyes roll in their socket*, the 

 jaws strike against each other, and the tongue is thrust out. The same 

 effects take place after decapitation of the animal. These experiments 

 have been repeated on the bodies of persons executed by the guillotine : 

 by applying to the neck, the head that had been separated from it, and 

 applying to both conductors connected with the pile, effects have been 

 produced, which seemed at first miraculous. There are fewrauscies that re- 

 tain, longer than the diphragm, their sensibility to the galvanic action; 

 in the heart, and in the intestines, it is the same. I know not why the 

 internal muscles have been held by many authors to be insensible to this 

 kind of excitation. I have seen them constantly obey it, and many ex- 



* It is unnecessary to refer to the brilliant discoveries which have been made* in chemi- 

 cal science by means of galvanism. 



