Dr. Hare's Deflagrator, and Colonmolor. 107 



forms of apparatus. It may also suggest, why in addition 

 to changes in the force or nature of the sensation produced 

 by the galvanic discharges which may be considered as de- 

 pendent on electric intensity, peculiarities have been ob- 

 served, which are not to be thus explained. The effect 

 on the animal frame, has been alleged to be proportional 

 to the electrical intensity, the effect on metals to the quan- 

 tity ; but according to the observations of Singer (which 

 are confirmed by mine) the electrical intensity is as great, 

 with water as with acid, if not greater even than with the 

 latter. The reverse is true of the shock. When the plates 

 of the deflagrator are moistened, and withdrawn from the 

 acid, the shock is far less powerful ; yet the electrical ex- 

 citement appear stronger. Light is undeniably requisite 

 to vegetable life, perhaps it is no less necessary in the 

 more complicated process of animal vitality, and the elec- 

 tric fluid may be the mean of its distribution. The mirac- 

 ulous difference observed in the properties of organic pro 

 ducts, formed of the same ponderable elements, may be 

 due to imponderable agents conveyed and fixed in them by 

 galvanism. Hence it may arise, that the prussic acid in- 

 stantaneously kills when applied to a tongue, containing 

 the same ponderable elements. When by the intense de- 

 composition of matter, light is always evolved ; when an 

 atom of tallow gives out enough of it to produce sensation 

 in the retina of millions of living beings why may it not 

 Vfhen presented in due form, influence the taste, and oth- 

 erwise stimulate the nervous system. For such an office 

 its subtilty would seem to qualify it eminently. The phe- 

 nomena of the fire-fly and the glow worm prove that it 

 may be secreted by the process of vitality. 



The discovery of alkaline qualities, as well as acid, in 

 organic products whose elements are otherwise found, 

 whether separate or in combination, without any such qual- 

 ities, and the opposite habitudes of acids and alkalies with 

 the voltaic poles, and their power of combining with, and 

 neutralizing each other, indicate that there may be some- 

 thing adventitious which causes alkalinity and acidity, and 

 that this something is of an imponderable character, and 

 dependent on galvanism. 



In the number of your Journal for October last, I gave 

 my reasons for believing in the existence of material im- 



