OF OPIUM AND HYDROCYANIC ACID. 95 
in man, the discoveries of philosophers, and the untimely end of 
Professor Rickmann, and others, testify. That the substance is 
capable of existing in opposite states, and undergoing transmuta- 
tion, is clearly exemplified in the laboratories of nature and art. 
It is also ascertained that the power of conducting or transferring 
this electric fluid, as it is termed, from one substance to another, 
and that of exciting or giving rise to the phenomena which it pro- 
duces, do not belong to the same body. 
It is also demonstrated that hair is a substance which is capa- 
ble of being, in conventional language, excited ; it therefore fol- 
lows, in accordance with the laws which govern electricity, that 
the same substance must be a non-conductor of it, from its being 
one of the sources from which it can so readily be derived. And 
upon reference to the catalogue of those bodies, which the labour 
and investigation of man have been enabled accurately to arrange 
in the order of the conducting powers, we find the fluids and ani- 
mated part of the creation standing high in the series; while we 
find, and can trace through an extensive range of the animal king- 
dom, in the structure of the envelope of the body, the beautiful 
design and display of wisdom which is shewn by the Omnipotent 
in the construction of his noblest works — in coating it with a sub- 
stance, not alike in all animals, but endowed with the same power — 
that of becoming incapable of being brought within the vortex of 
that sublime but destructive phenomenon, lightning. Yes ! this 
substance, which shrouds and protects us from the threatening and 
surrounding danger, is cuticle ; but in some of the lower animals, 
and in that to which our subject has reference, there is added ano- 
ther and a more impervious one — hair, which is placed nearly at 
the bottom of the catalogue to which I have alluded. 
What, then, of necessity follows the removal of this outer barrier 
to the passage of electricity into the body 1 — which, in accordance 
with the inherent power which it possesses, is, like the metallic 
chain extending from the conductor of an electrical machine to the 
great reservoir of the electric fluid, the earth, and is, when excited, 
robbing the body, its greatest source, of electricity, to impart it 
to other external things abounding with less of the electric fluid, 
and thus an electric change is formed. When, however, the hair is 
left alone, and not excited by friction, the electric current in the body 
must be feeble ; and if its operations are influenced or promoted in 
any degree by it, they must, in the order of things, suffer. 
What then — kind reader — will you infer, if that which has been 
stated is at all tenable ] Why, the first deduction is autoptical, the 
system being thrown from a state of debility into one of excite- 
ment, or rather increased energetic action. The other deductions 
which follow are the early buds of an immature mind, that await, 
