Sune 12, 1873] 
and required repetition before the rigidity was rendered per- 
manent. 
By employing discharges of less tension it was found that 
muscles, or special tracts of muscles, in the same animal imme- 
diately after its death, could be made rigid quickly or slowly by 
variation of the intensity of the discharge. 
The effect of the intermittent electro-magnetic current was 
next brought forward, and was shown to resemble closely that 
of the simple electrical discharge from the Leyden phial, 
Intensified it induces permanent contraction ; and if it be re- 
peated even with low tension, so as to call forth contraction, it 
destroys the irritability, ceteris paribus, more quickly than if the 
muscle had been left to itself. 
Parenthetically, the lecturer dwelt here on the common prac- 
tice, after sudden death, of endeavouring to excite the action of 
the enfeebled heart by passing through it an electrical current. 
Some practitioners, said the author, have gone so far as to intro- 
duce a needle into the heart itself, and to make the needle act 
as one of the conductors from a battery. Such experimentalists, 
before they undertake this operation on the human subject, 
should at least observe the effect of the agency they are employ- 
ing on the exposed heart of an inferior animal recently and 
suddenly killed by drowning or by a narcotic vapour. They 
would learn then with what infinite facility the muscular irrita- 
bility of the heart, in all its parts, is excited for a moment only 
to be permanently destroyed. They would learn that if blood 
be not passing through the muscular structure concurrently with 
their exciting current, they could not more effectually arrest 
function than by the very method they have adopted to sus- 
tain it. 
The influence of the continuous current on muscular irrita- 
bility was introduced by the author, together with a special 
reference to the first experiments of Aldini on the bodies of 
malefactors who had been recently executed ; and it was shown 
from Aldini’s most noted experiment how largely the phenomena 
of motion he induced in a dead man, and the recital of which 
caused so much sensation in the year 1803, was due, not to the 
galvanism, but to the circumstance that the dead body had been 
exposed for the hour after death and before the experiments 
commenced, to the action of cold two degrees below freezing- 
point. On the whole the continuous current acts on muscular 
fibre after the manner of heat. If the muscle, recently dead, be 
exposed to cold, the current, when sufficient, restores for a 
limited period the irritability, and finally destroys it by inducing 
persistent contraction. If the muscle, recently dead, be left at 
its natural temperature, the current simply shortens the period 
of irritability by quickening contraction. 
Abstraction and Supply of Blood 
Under this head the author first considered the effect of ab- 
straction of blood from the living muscular fibre. He showed 
that when the flow of blood was very rapid, there was invariably 
agiven period of muscular excitation. In sheep killed in the 
slaughterhouse he found that this muscular excitement occurred 
at the time when the proportion of blood removed from the 
animal was equivalent to about the 320th part of the weight of 
the animal. The increased ,irritability passes rapidly into 
general convulsion without consciousness, and, as a rule, ceases 
for a time with a temporary cessation of further loss of blood. 
After this the irritability remains, if the bleeding be arrested 
altogether, and can be called into action by any external 
stimulus, although it is rarely spontaneously manifested when 
the vessels are left divided and open. After an interval of one 
or two minutes there is a recurrence of loss of blood, followed 
by a muscular excitement which marks the moment of systemic 
death. 
The fact of the two stages of exalted muscular irritability 
during abstraction of blood is important, as indicating the two 
different tensions of muscle to which reference has already been 
made, The first convulsive action, convulsion of syncope, 
marks a definite period, when the tension of the heart and there- 
with the whole vascular system is reduced to a degree of action 
well defined and attended with definite phenomena. The second 
excitement, convulsion of death, indicates the period when the 
passive or lower tension of the muscular power ceases, 
A distinction was -here drawn by the author between the 
muscular conditions present during syncope and during death. 
Syncope, it was urged, means the continued action of the heart- 
at a low tension, from which it can be suddenly raised into full 
tension with restoration of the powers of life ; death means the 
NATURE 
| 
133 
cessation of the lowest tension at which the heart can effectively 
work, 
It was shown that in all the cases of restored animation after 
apparent death, the condition of the heart was that of a muscle 
acting under the lower degree of tension. 
The experiments of the author for re-establishing artificial. 
respiration together with artificial circulation, and of these com- 
bined with electrical excitation of the nervous centres, were 
next referred to; but as they had already formed the subject 
of a paper read before the Society, they were but briefly dwelt 
upon. 
Lffect of some Chemical Agents 
In this portion of his lecture the author adduced a series of 
experimental researches with various chemical substances, orga- 
nic, inorganic, and intermediate, which tend to prolong the 
period of muscular irritability by diffusion through the tissues of 
animals recently dead. These substances, which suspend irri- 
tability, act in two ways. Some, like chloride of sodium and 
other soluble saline substances, act merely by holding the coagu- 
lable fluid of the muscular tissue in a continued state of fluidity ; 
others seem to have a different action, and to hold the nervous 
function also in suspense. The nitrite of amyl and other mem- 
bers of the nitrite series belong to this last-named class of agents, 
and some of the cyanogen bodies exert a similar influence. In 
experiments with nitrite of amyl on cold-blooded animals (frogs), 
the author had suspended muscular irritability for a period of 
nine days, and had then seen it restored to the extent even of 
restoration of life. In one instance this restoration took place 
after the commencement of decomposition in the web of the foot 
of the animal. In warm-blooded animals a series of suspensions 
had been effected by nitrites and also by cyanogens, not for so 
long a period, but for periods of hours, in one instance extend- 
ing to ten hours. 
In the whole series of his inquiries no fact had impressed the 
author more forcibly than this : that the muscular irritability, in 
so far as it belongs to the muscle, may be sustained for hours after 
the nervous excitation which calls it into spontaneous action has 
ceased. Hereupon he infers that after death the nervous matter 
undergoes a change of condition which, z vesz/t, is identical with 
that change in muscle which we cail rigor. There is evidence, 
morec ver, from some rare cases, that the final inertia of nervous 
matter may be suspended and revived, so that all the muscles 
may be reanimated. This point was elucidated by reference to 
the phenomena that had recently been observed by Mr. Wads- 
dale Watson, of Newport, Monmouthshire, on a double monster, 
drawings of which were placed before the society. In this in- 
stance two children were born so attached that the separation of 
them was impossible. Both lived equally for three hours after 
birth, and then one died and remained dead for three hours, 
while the other lived. At the end of the time named the dead 
child recommenced to breathe, and showed other signs of re- 
stored muscular power; then it sank into a seemed deuth, but 
at intervals of about four hours moved again ; at length, twenty- 
three hours after its first apparent death, during a fit of crying of 
the living child, it recovered sufficient power to breathe and even 
to cry, and manifested evidence of life in all its muscles, exce >t 
the heart, for twenty minutes, when it had a severe convulsio», 
which closed all further motion. 
In this instance the author believed that the retention of spon- 
taneous muscular irritability depended upon the retention in the 
nervous organism of the conditions necessary for independent 
action. He then concluded by giving a description of his re« 
searches as to the possibility of suspending nervous changes 
incident to death, so as to retain the conditions requisite for the 
communication of nervous impulse to muscular fibre. 
SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 
Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie Neue Rethe, Band xci., 
Heft 1, May 6, 1873.—The number opens with a long paper by 
Oscar Jacobsen on the gases of sea-water. Notices of former 
researches on this subject are given. Ina table the results of 95 
analyses by the author are given with the localities of collection. 
These are in the North Sea and the Baltic—On the oxidation of 
allantoin by means of potassic ferricyanide, by F. C. E. van 
Embden. The two bodies were mixed, one molecule of each, 
in solution, and the mixture acidulated with acetic acid. A 
crystalline precipitate was produced, having the formula 
C,N,H,KO, This the author regards as the potassium 
