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PROFESSOR MATTE UCCl’S ELECTRO-PHYSIOLOGICAL RESEARCHES. 
we obtain the discharge from that small portion of the organ into which the nerve 
penetrates. We have thus every reason to conclude that the electric organ of the 
torpedo and of all the electric fishes is composed of a great number of elementary 
organs, and that the elementary organ is nothing else but a nervous fibril in contact 
with a small cell filled with albumen. And since this cell gives an electric shock 
when it is subjected to nervous action, we are compelled to admit that under nervous 
influence the two opposite electricities separate to be instantaneously re-united. 
This relation between nervous influence and electricity is, without doubt, of the 
same nature as that which exists between heat and electricity, between the electric 
current and magnetism. It is in studying the production of electricity in the different 
electric fishes, together with the distribution of nervous filaments in their electric 
organs, that we arrive at a better understanding of this relation between nervous 
influence (la force nerveuse) and electricity. Thus we see in the torpedo and gym- 
notus — the two electric fishes best known physically and anatomically — that the 
nervous filament always ramifies in the electric organs of these fishes perpendicularly 
to the axis of the prisms of these organs. Besides which we know that the extremi- 
ties or poles of the electric organs in these two fishes are situated at the extremities of 
the prisms : in effect, in the torpedo these poles are the ventral and dorsal surfaces, 
while in the gymnotus the poles are at the head and tail of the animal. 
It will be seen from this, that in this action of the nervous force, as exercised in the 
electric organs of these fishes, it follows the same law in developing electricity as 
does the electric current upon magnetic bodies. In effect, each prism of these elec- 
tric organs cannot be considered otherwise than as a pile of elementary organs, upon 
each of which a nervous filament is spread normally to the axis of this pile. Now a 
cylinder of cast iron enclosed in a helix of metallic wire, and traversed by the electric 
current, is evidently an apparatus analogous to a prism of the electric organ of the 
fish at the moment when the nervous influence excites the discharge. 
On one side we have the two opposite states of electricity, the tension of both of 
which must increase at the extremities of each prism in proportion to the number of 
elementary organs of which it is composed ; on the other hand, we have opposite 
magnetic states, the strength of which at the poles is also proportional to the number 
of magnetic elements of the cylinder. 
Experience has in fact shown, both in the torpedo and in the gymnotus, that the 
strength of the current obtained during the discharge is proportional to the length of 
the prisms included in the circuit closed. I have frequently seen, on dividing the 
electric organ of the living torpedo in a plane parallel to the surface of the organ, 
that the sum of the currents given by the different slices of the organ were approx- 
imatively equal to the current given by the entire organ. These same facts are verified 
also by including different points of the electric organ of the torpedo in the circuit ; 
we know, in effect, that the current is stronger when points near the median line of 
the animal are touched, than when more remote points are. Nothing is easier than 
