66 BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 



At first sight it might appear that their very ■po'vrer had prevented their use. 

 Humboldt mentions that " the dread of the shocks caused by the gymnoti is so 

 great, and so exaggerated among the common people, that dui"ing three days we 

 could not obtain one, though they are easily caught, and we had promised the 

 Indians two piastres for every strong, vigorous fish." And that this fear, however 

 exaggerated, is in the main well founded, is rendered certain by the unexception- 

 able testimony of Humboldt himself, not only in his famous account of the battle 

 between the wild horses of the savannahs and the gymnoti, whose favourite pools 

 they reluctantly invaded, but also in his description of the effect of a gymuotus- 

 shock received in full force by himself. 



" It would be temerity," says he, " to expose ourselves to the first shocks of a 

 very large and strongly-irritated gymnotus. If by chance a stroke be received 

 before the fish is wounded or wearied by long pursuit, the paiu and numbness are 

 so violent that it is impossible to describe the nature of the feeling they excite. I 

 do not remember having ever received from the discharge of a large Leyden jar a 

 more dreadful shock than that which I experienced by having imprudently placed 

 both my feet on a gymnotus just taken out of the water. I was affected during the rest 

 of the day with a violent pain in the knees and in almost every joint. To be aware 

 of the difference that exists between the sensation produced by the voltaic bat- 

 tery and an electric fish, the latter should be touched when they are in a state of ex- 

 treme weakness. The gymnoti and the torpedos then cause a twitching of the mus- 

 cles, which is propagated from the part that rests on the electric organs, as far as 

 the elbow. We seem to feel at every stroke an internal vibration, which lasts two 

 or three seconds, and is followed by a painful numbness. Accordingly, the Tamanac 

 Indians call the gymnotus, in their expressive language, arimna, which means, some- 

 thing that deprives of motion.' " 



We cannot wonder, then, that the Indians who had experiences, such as Humboldt 

 underwent, and who, unlike the philosopher, were unacquainted with the limits 

 within which the shjck-giving power of the gymnotus is restricted, should be un- 

 willing to provoke its anger. This, however, has not kept them from employing 

 it in medicine. All my information on this point is derived from Humboldt, and 

 he does enter into details, but the following statement is suflSciently explicit : — 



" In Dutch Guiana, at Demerara for instance, electric eels were formerly em- 

 ployed to cure paralytic affections. At a time when the physicians of Europe 

 had great confidence in the effects of electricity, a surgeon of Essequibo, named 

 Van der Lott, published in Holland a treatise on the Medical Properties of the 

 Gymnotus . These electric remedies are practised among the savages of America, 

 as they were among the Greeks." 



I have not been able to obtain sight of Van der Lett's work, but Humboldt 

 plainly records the Indian use of the gymnotus in medicine as a device of the 

 Americans, not an imitation of European practice. 



From a further statement it appears that the Spaniards had not taught this 

 practice to the Indians, or borrowed it from them. " I did not," observes Hum- 

 boldt, " hear of this mode of treatment in the Spanish colonies which I visited ; 

 and I can assert that, after having made experiments during four hours successive- 

 ly with gymnoti, M. Bonpland and myself felt till the next day a debility in the 

 muscles, a pain in the joints, and a general uneasiness, the effect of a strong irrita- 

 tion of the nervous system." 



