EFFECTS OF ELECTRICAL WAVES 491 
II 
My experiments were published in the June number of 
Pfliigers Archiv. Inthe July number of the Archives de 
physiologie B. Danilewsky published two articles under the 
title, ‘‘ Excitation des nerfs par les rayons électriques.” 
Danilewsky overlooked the circumstance upon which every- 
‘thing depends in this case—the significance of the orienta- 
tion of the nerves toward the spark discharge. It will be 
seen that Danilewsky’s experiments are a further proof for 
my assumption that the effects which he and I observed are 
ol 
FIG. 144 
not determined by the oscillatory nature of the discharge. 
For his experiments are made in a way which does away 
with the oscillatory nature of the discharge almost entirely. 
The experiments of Danilewsky apparently fall into three 
groups. In reality, however, we are dealing with one and 
the same experiment. We will discuss first of all the ex- 
periment which he designates as the “interference experi- 
ment” (p. 524). Each of the poles of the Ruhmkorff coil is 
connected with a smooth metal plate. These metal plates 
are set up parallel to each other some 50 to 100 cm. apart. 
“Tf the nerve is placed in a position symmetrical with the 
two metal plates, one obtains no effect... . . The symme- 
try needs to be altered only slightly, that is to say, the prep- 
aration needs to approximate one of the metal plates only 
slightly, in order to bring about induced contractions.” If 
we study the drawing (Fig. 144, according to Danilewsky) 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
