246 Address of the President of the British Association. 



w In physiology, the most remarkable of the discoveries, or rather 

 improvements of previous discoveries, which the past year has seen, is, 

 perhaps, that connected with the labors of the distinguished Tuscan 

 philosopher, Matteucci ; who on several former occasions has coope- 

 rated with this Association in the sections devoted to the advancement 

 of the physical and physiological sciences, I refer in this instance to 

 his experiments on the generation of electric currents by muscular con- 

 traction in the living body. This subject he has continued to pursue; 

 and, by the happy combination of the rigorous methods of physical 

 experiment with the ordinary course of physiological research, Prof. 

 Matteucci has fully established the important fact of the existence of 

 an electrical current — feeble, indeed, and such as could only be made 

 manifest by his own delicate galvanoscope — between the deep and the 

 superficial parts of a muscle. Such electric currents pervade every 

 muscle in every species of animal which has been the subject of ex- 

 periment ; and may, therefore, be inferred to be a general phenomena 

 of living bodies. Even after life has been extinguished by violence, 

 these currents continue for a short time ; but they cease more speedily 

 in the muscles of the warm-blooded than in those of the cold-blooded 

 animals. The Association will find his own exposition of the physio- 

 logical action of the electric current in his work, c Lecons sur les Phe- 

 nomenes Physiques des Corps Vivants,' 1847. 



" The delicate experiments of Matteucci on the torpedo, agree with 

 those made by our own Faraday (whom I may call doubly our own 

 in this place, where he is a Doctor of our University) upon the Gym* 

 notus electricus, in proving that the shocks communicated by those 

 fishes are due to electric currents generated by peculiar electric organs, 

 which owe their most immediate and powerful stimulus to the action of 

 the nerves.— In both species of fishes the electricity generated by the 

 action of their peculiar organized batteries—besides its benumbing and 

 stunning effects on living animals,— renders the needle magnetic, de- 

 composes chemical compounds, emits the spark, and, in short, exercises 

 all the other known powers of the ordinary electricity developed in 

 inorganic matter or by the artificial apparatus of the laboratory. 



" Etherization, a kindred subject,— one to which deep and natural 

 importance is now attached,— may not unfitly follow the mention of 

 Prof. Matteucci's investigations. 



" It is the subject of the influence of the vapor of ether on the hu- 

 man frame — a discovery of the last year, and one the value of which 

 in diminishing human pain has been experienced in countless instances, 

 in every variety of disease, and especially during the performance °t 

 trying and often agonizing operations. Several experiments on the 

 tracts and nerve roots appropriated respectively to the functions of sen- 

 sation and volition, have been resumed and repeated in connexion with 

 this new agency on the nervous system. Messrs. Flourens and Longet 

 have shown that the sensatorial functions are first affected, and are 

 completely, though temporarily, suspended under the operation of the 

 vapor of ether ; then the mental or cerebral powers ; and finally, the 

 motor and excito-motor forces are abrogated. It would seem that the 

 stimulus of ether applied so largely or continuously as to produce th i 

 effect is full of danger— and that weak constitutions are sometimes 



