156 



Dr. C. B. RadcliflFe on Eledroscopic 



[May3J, 



May 31, 1866. 



Dr. WILLIAM ALLEN MILLER, Treasurer and Vice-President, 



in the Chair. 



The following communications were read : — 



I. An Account of Experiments in some of which Electroscopic 

 Indications of Animal Electricity were detected for the first 

 time by a new method of experimenting/^ By Charles Bland 

 Badcliffe, M.D., Fellow of the Boyal College of Physicians 

 in London, Physician to the Westminster Hospital and to the 

 National Hospital for Paralysis and Epilepsy, &c. Communi- 

 cated by Charles Brooke, M.A. Received March 15, 1866. 



Very soon after the discovery of animal electricity by Galvani, Hemmer 

 ascertained that electroscopic indications of electricity might be obtained 

 at the surface of the human body. The instruments used in these investi- 

 gations were the electroscope of Saussure and the condenser of Volta : the 

 broad result arrived at was — that the indications in question might be 

 sometimes present and sometimes absent ; that they pointed sometimes to 

 positive electricity, and sometimes to negative ; and that they did not 

 depend (except, perhaps, in a very small degree) upon the friction of the 

 hair, or skin, or clothes, or carpet. 



Upwards of sixty years have passed since Hemmer published the account 

 of his labours. During the first half of this period not a little good work 

 was done in this branch of scientific inquiry, especially by Gardini in 

 1792, by Ahrens in 1817, and by Nasse in 1834 ; and what was done is in 

 the main confirmatory of the genuineness of the work done by Hemmer. 

 During the last thirty years, on the contrary, little or nothing has been 

 done*. It seems, indeed, as if the discovery of the galvanometer, now 

 a little more than thirty years ago, had diverted attention from the elec- 

 troscope : at any rate it is the fact that it has been the fashion since the 

 discovery of the galvanometer to forget the static, and to think only of the 

 current phenomena of animal electricity. Nor is this altogether to be 

 wondered at ; for it must be allowed that the facilities for detecting the 

 current phenomena of animal electricity are far, very far greater than those 

 for detecting the static phenomena of this agent. Be this as it may, how- 

 ever, my own experience amounts to this — that I found- it difficult to 



* One exception to this statement must be made in favour of some recent investigations 

 by Dr. Meissner, of which an account is given in an article entitled " Ueber das elec- 

 trische Verhalten der Oberflache des menschlichen Korpors," in Henle and Pfeufer's 

 ' Zeitschrift fiir rationelle Medicin.' Dritte Eeihe, Band xii. 1861. These investiga- 

 gations seem to be very deserving of careful study, and I much regret that my atten- 

 tion was only for the first time directed to them in some remarks which followed the 

 reading of this paper at the Meeting of the E^^yal Society. 



