60 BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 



am aware, has even hinted the claim of the electric fishes to rank first in order of 

 time among electrical instruments. 



The subject is one of greater interest to physicists than to naturalists, but i bring 

 it before the Watural History Section of this Association rather than before tlie 

 sections devoted to Physics and Chemistry, in the hope of inducing naturalists 

 placed in favourable localities to enquire how far uncivilized nations familiar with 

 electric fishes employ their powers remedially. 



The subject admits of a twofold division, — into, 1st, The antiquity of the practice 

 of using the electrical fishes as remedial agents ; 2d, The extent or generality of that 

 practice. 



So far as I have yet ascertained, the fishes which have been or are thus employed 

 are limited to different species of the torpedo, the gymnotus, and the silurus or 

 malapterurus ; the first a widely distributed marine genus, the second abounding 

 in many of the rivers of South America, and the third in certain of those of Africa. 

 Of none of these fishes but the gymnotus can it with certainty be affirmed, that 

 those who made use of them were aware that they were electrical instruments ; 

 and in the case of the gymnotus this remark applies only to its therapeutic use in 

 very recent times. There is reason, indeed to believe that it had been employed 

 for centuries by the South American savages as a mysterious heroic remedy ; but 

 in speaking of the zoo-electric machine as the earliest electric instrument, I must 

 throughout be understood as looking at the living apparatus from a modern elec- 

 trician's point of view. 



The antiquity of the practice first concerns us, and must be rested chiefly on the 

 torpedo, as employed by the civilized dwellers on the shores of the Mediterranean. 

 From their writings we can trace the practice back for nearly two thousand years ; 

 certainly to before the Christian era. 



On this point I shall mainly be content to quote the statements of the Rev. C. 

 David Badham, M.D. In his learned and most amusing volume, " Prose Halieu- 

 tics, or Ancient and Modern Fish Tattle," he thus writes of the torpedo 

 under its Greek name Nap^rj ; — "Besides those Sicarian Skate., there is one of 

 much smaller limensions, but of far more marvellous powers, which long before 

 Leyden phials were invented, or the principles of electricity were understood, had 

 pressed this redoubtable agent into its service, and was wont to give practical les- 

 sons in the science to all wlio did not object to the • charge.' The peculiar powers 

 of this fish are cursorily alluded to, or commemorated at length, by a whole host 

 of ancient writej's, — 



' Quis non edomitam mirss torpedinis artem 

 Audit et emeritas signatas nomine vires ?' 



asks Claudian ; Plato compares Socrates to a Nai'ke, from that sage's well-known 

 capabilities of electrifying his auditory ; and its achievements have been amply 

 detailed by Aristotle, Cicero, Plutarch, Pliny, Oppian, ^lian, Athenseus, and 

 Galen." So far as medical use is concerned, Dr. Badham observes, that " the elec- 

 tric properties of this enchantress of the sea suggested to ancient practitioners to 

 try its efiicacy in the cure of headache and painful nervous aftectious, by applying 

 it epidermically ; and Dr. Galen, who seems to have been a strong homoeopathist, 

 advises the numb-fish (which he erroneously supposed to retain some electrical 

 virtue after death and stewing) as a dish to paralytic patients, with a view to 

 cure their numbness : no doubt on the similia similibus principle." 



