ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 165 
quired the human body to be taken at the immediate in- 
stant after the extinction of life, he believed he would do 
well, as he relates himSelf, to take his place beside the 
scaffold, and under the axe of the law, to receive from the 
executioner’s hand the blood-stained bodies which were the 
only really suitable subjects for his experiments. In Jan- 
uary and February, 1802, he availed himself ofthe occasion 
of the beheading at Boulogne of two criminals, whom the 
government willingly gave up to his scientific inquiry. 
Subjected to electric action, these bodies presented so 
strange a sight as to terrify some of the assistants. The 
muscles of the face contracted in frightful grimaces. All 
the limbs were seized with violent convulsions. The bodies 
seemed to feel the first stir of resurrection, and an impulse 
to spring up. For several hours after decapitation, the 
vital centres of movement retained the power of answering 
to the electric excitement. At Glasgow, Ure made some 
equally noted experiments on the body of a criminal, which 
had remained on the gallows nearly an hour. One of the 
poles of a battery of 270 pairs having been connected with 
the spinal marrow, below the nape of the neck, and the 
other pole touching the heel, the leg, until then bent back, 
was forcibly thrown forward, almost oversetting one of the 
assistants, who had a strong hold on it. Placing one of 
the poles on the seventh rib, and the other on one of 
the nerves of the neck, the chest rose and fell, and the ab- 
domen underwent the like motion, as in the act of breath- 
ing. On touching a nerve of the eyelid at the same time 
with the heel, the muscles of the face contracted, “ rage, 
horror, despair, anguish, and fearful grins, combined in hid- 
eous expressions on the dead man’s face.” At the terrible 
sight one person fainted, and several were obliged to leave 
the room. Afterward, by exciting convulsive movements 
of the arms and fingers, the corpse was made to seem to 
point to one or another of the spectators. 
