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Electricity and Galvanism, in their Physiological and Therapeutical 

 relations. By Br. Golding Bird, F. R. S., Fellow of the 

 College, Assistant Physician to Guy's Hospital. 



[Continued from page 134.] 



In my last lecture I pointed out the universal distribution of elec- 

 tricity in brute matter, and exhibited some of its effects when its 

 equilibrium is disturbed by mechanical, chemical, and thermal in- 

 fluences, and then proceeded to demonstrate its existence in living 

 beings, and succeeded in obtaining it in a state of tension from my 

 own body. The great discovery of Galvani, and the more recent 

 researches of Nobili, Matteucci, and others, next engaged our atten- 

 tion ; and, having adduced sufficient evidence of the existence of free 

 electricity of varying tension in animal structure, we are now pre- 

 pared to grapple with the difficult and interesting question which 

 next arises. 



Having demonstrated the existence of electricity in the animal 

 frame — what is its origin 1 — whence is it derived 1 — if we for a 

 moment animadvert upon the facts already recounted, we find evi- 

 dence of the existence of electricity under two distinct forms ; one 

 in whieh this agent is in a neutral and static condition, that is, in a 

 state of rest, capable of being resolved into its two component ele- 

 ments by various mechanical and chemical processes. Tins form of 

 electricity is possessed by the living fabric in accordance apparently 

 with the general laws of the universal diffusion of this agent through- 

 out all matter, whether dead and inert, or quick and animated with 

 the flame of life. It was this that I decomposed by drawing a comb 

 through my hair, and the existence of one of whose elements in a 

 free state I demonstrated with the electrometer. "We have no 

 means, in the present state of our knowledge, of explaining the origin 

 of this electricity in the body, save by referring it to the fiat of 

 omniscience. 



There is, however, another state in which electricity exists — a 

 dynamic condition, electricity in motion, or in the state of current. 

 This evidently is not anything superadded to the body, but is merely 

 the electricity normally existing in a state of rest and neutral eondi- 



