166 On Eledroscopic Indications of Animal Electricity. [May 31, 



the muscles, living and dead, of various animals, oxen, sheep, donkeys, 

 dogs, and rabbits, and I have found in the great majority of instances that 

 all parts of the surface of living muscle furnished indications of the same 

 kind of electricity, that this electricity was sometimes positive, sometimes 

 negative, and that these signs were invariably absent in muscle which had 

 passed into the state of riffor mortis. These experiments, moreover, make 

 it difficult to agree with Professor Du Bois Reymond in thinking that the 

 longitudinal surface, natural or artificial, of the muscular fibres, and the 

 transverse sectional surface of these fibres, are electrified with different kinds 

 of electricity. With respect to the electricity of muscular tissue, indeed, it 

 seems to he precisely as it is with respect to the electricity of nerve-tissue, 

 namely this, that all parts of the surface are electrified with the same kind 

 of electricity, positive or negative, as the case may be, the only difference 

 between one part and another being one of degree ; and the comments 

 upon M. Du Bois Reymond' s conclusions, when speaking upon the condi- 

 tion of nerve-tissue as to electricity, are equally applicable to the present 

 case, if only the words muscular tissue and muscular current be substituted 

 for nerve-tissue and nerve- current. 



In conclusion, it only remains for me to direct attention to one bearing 

 of the facts recorded in this paper. These facts, one and all, exhibit ani- 

 mal electricity, not in the form of a feeble nerve-current, or of a feeble 

 muscular current, or of the still feebler currents of less definite character, 

 but as endowed with a considerable amount of tension. They bring to 

 light a property of animal electricity which is more intelligible on the sup- 

 position that the primary condition of this electricity is not current but 

 statical. It is easy to account for these phenomena of tension if the pri- 

 mary condition of animal electricity be statical, for tension is the character- 

 istic property of statical electricity ; it is by no means easy to account for 

 these phenomena of tension if the primary condition of animal electricity 

 be that of the current revealed by the galvanometer, for the currents so 

 revealed are far too feeble to allow one to suppose that they can be endowed 

 with an appreciable amount of tension. In a word, with the phenomena 

 of tension to account for which are revealed in the experiments recorded 

 in this paper, the natural inference, as it seems to me, is that the primary 

 condition of animal electricity is, not current, but statical, and that the 

 currents made known by the galvanometer to which so much attention 

 has been paid of late — the muscular current, the nerve-current, and the 

 rest— are secondary phenomena developed accidentally by placing the ends 

 of the coil of the galvanometer so as to include points in which the elec- 

 tricity is different in degree. Nay, it would seem that these currents may 

 in reality be a retarded discharge of statical electricity, for it is a fact that 

 they cannot be detected without a coil of which the wire is so long and so 

 fine as to be capable of giving sufficient resistance to bridle a discharge 



