396 Miscellanies. 
When most favorably circumstanced, four sparks per minute, of 
one inch and a half, would pass from the end of her finger to a brass 
ball on the stove ; these were quite brilliant, distinctly seen and heard 
in any part of a large room, and sharply felt when they passed 
to another person. In order further to test the strength of this 
measure, it was passed to the balls by four persons forming a line; 
this, however, evidently diminished its intensity, yet the spark was 
bright.* 
The foregoing experiments, and others of a similar kind, were 
indefinitely repeated, we safely say hundreds of times, and to those 
who witnessed the exhibitions they were perfectly satisfactory, as 
much so as if they had been produced by an electrical machine and 
the electricity accumulated in a battery. 
The lady had no internal evidence of this faculty, a faculty sui 
generis ; it was manifest to her only in the phenomena of its leav- 
ing her by sparks, and its dissipation was imperceptible, while walk- 
ing her room or seated in a common chair, even after the intensity 
had previously arrived at the point, of affording one and a half inch 
sparks. 
Neither the lady’s hair or silk, so far as was noticed, was ever 
in a state of divergence; but without doubt this was owing to her 
dress being thick and heavy, and to her hair having been laid smooth 
at her toilet and firmly fixed before she appeared upon her insulator. 
As this case advanced, and supposing the electricity to have re- 
sulted from the friction of her silk, I directed (after a few days) an en- 
tire change of my patient’s apparel, believing that the substitution of 
one of cotton, flannel, &c. would relieve her from her electrical in- 
conveniences,} and at the same time a sister, then staying with her, 
by my request, assumed her dress or a precisely similar one ; but in 
both instances the experiment was an entire failure, for it neither 
abated the intensity of the electrical excitement in the former in- 
stance, or produced it in the latter. 
My next conjecture was, that the electricity resulted from the 
friction of her flannels on the surface, but this suggestion was soon 
* It is greatly to be regretted that the spark had not been received into a Ley- 
den bottle until it would accumulate no longer, and then transferred to a line of 
persons to receive the shock.—#Hd. 
+ This could hardly have been expected from non-conductors; we are informed 
that the lady was relieved of the electricity by a free communication with the 
earth by a good conductor, in the manner of a lightning rod, as by touching the 
stove and its connection with the earth through the medium of the chimney.—£d. 
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