BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 61 



"Whether Galen held the theory which Dr. Badham, half ia jest, half in earnest, 

 attributes to him, it is interesting to know that the term torpedo (happily trans- 

 lated numb-fish^, implies that the Roman physicians -were more struck by the ulti- 

 mate paralysing effect of the torpedo's discharge than by the earlier convulsing one. 

 (xalen, indeed, Teferred the powers of the fish to its exertion of " a torporific action 

 peculiar to itself," so that we can scarcely say that he looked upon an electric fish 

 as a shock-machine. We must. not however, attach too much importance to the 

 mere name of the one electric fish known to the classical naturalists and physi- 

 cians. The sensations excited by what a modern physician would call the dis- 

 charge of electricity, great in quantity, and moderately high in intensity, through 

 the body, are in reality indescribable; but the ancient observers have depicted 

 those sensations, to the extent that they had experienced them, as faithfully as any 

 modern has done. We acknowledge, and escape the difficulty of precise descrip- 

 tion, by calling the sensations in question as a whole, " an electi'ic shock." And 

 as the ancients were familiar with the "shock," though they had no single term 

 for it, I count it no anachronism to say that the torpedo was for them as for us, a 

 living, electric shock-machine. The title, it will be observed, is a distinctive one, 

 applicable only to a few creatures. The observations of Galvani, interpreted and 

 greatly extended by Matteueci, Mliller, Dubois Reyraond, and others, have shown 

 us that the higher animals, and probably all animals, are in a true sense electric 

 machines, but not that they are shock-machines. They constantly develop electri- 

 city ; but to the slight extent that it acts externally to their bodies, its quantity ig 

 too small, and its intensity too low, to confer upon it the slightest shock-giving 

 power; the animal cannot, by an act of volition, influence the electrical currents 

 which it unconsciously develops. On the other hand, a few creatures, all scaleless 

 inhabitants of the waters, develop electricity, great in quantity, high in intensity, 

 and admitting, as the creature wills, of being retained latent, or set free with kill- 

 ing force. These fishes thus correspond to our artificial therapeutic electric 

 instruments, such as the coil-machine, in the quantity and quality of the electricity 

 they furnish, but differ from them in this important particular, that we cannot 

 compel them to give a shock any more than we can compel a leech to bite or to 

 suck blood. So much are we at the mercy of their will in this matter, that in the 

 case of the torpedo, Badham, speaking of himself, says, " We were not able, durino- 

 a long sojourn at Naples, to obtain one shock in our own person ; while many laz- 

 zaroni friends, who did not seek it, had frequently their arms ' astonished ' (the 

 word is Reaumur's) for a -whole day after lugging a narke on board." How far the 

 ancients realized this fact, of which to some extent they must have been cognisant, 

 and what devices they followed to induce the torpedo to give its shock, doos not 

 appear very clearly from the Greek and Roman writings which have came down 

 to us. Galen's ascription of similar properties to the dead as to the livino- tor- 

 pedo, is not reconcilable with the belief that he was fully aware of the purely 

 voluntary nature of the electric discharge. The same remark in all likelihood 

 may be applied to the majority of the ancient practitioners who employed the tor- 

 pedo in medicine. Nevertheless, it will be seen from their prescriptions, copied 

 in the sequel, that they were generally strict in requiring that the fish should be 

 alive, and whatever antiparalytic virtues Galen may have attributed to its cooked 

 body, he denies that it has any narcotic effect as a medicine, unless when applied 

 alive." A similar conviction probably led to the cruel practice of boilino- the 

 living torpedo in oil, with a view to produce an anodyne liniment. On this point, - 



