SUPPOSED EEMEDIAE VIBTUES. 
119 ’ 
ttgly, the Tamanac Indians call the gymnotus, in their 
oppressive language, arimna, which means ‘ something that 
deprives of motion.’ 
The sensation caused by the feeble shocks of an electric 
e< fl appeared to me analogous to that painful twitching 
Yuth which I have been seized at each contact of two 
heterogeneous metals applied to wounds which I had made 
°n my back by means of cantharides. This difference of 
sensation between the effects of electric fishes and those 
of a Yoltaic battery or a Leyden jar feebly charged has 
struck every observer; there is, however, nothing in this 
contrary to the supposition of the identity of electricity and 
the galvanic action of fishes. The electricity may be the 
same ; but its effects will be variously modified by the dis- 
position of the electrical apparatus, by the intensity of the 
fluid, by the rapidity of the current, and by the particular 
*Uode of action. 
Iu Dutch Guiana, at Demerara for instance, electric 
eels were formerly employed to cure paralytic affections, 
‘i a time when the physicians of Europe had great confi- 
dence in the effects of electricity, a surgeon of Essequibo, 
darned Van der Lott, published in Holland a treatise on 
the medical properties of the gymnotus. These electric 
remedies are practised among the savages of America, as 
they were among the Greeks. We are told by Scribonius 
Largus, Galen, and Dioscorides, that torpedos cure the head- 
ac he and the gout. I did not hear of this mode of treat- 
lne ut in the Spanish colonies which I visited ; and I can 
assert that, after having made experiments during four hours 
Successively with gymnoti, M. Bonpland and myself felt, till 
u ; uext day, a debility in the muscles, a pain in the joints, 
ncl a general uneasiness, the effect of a strong irritation of 
dervous system. 
^ f-ue gymnotus is neither a charged conductor, nor a 
, attery, nor an electromotive apparatus, the shock of which 
® received every time they are touched with one hand, or 
i en both hands are applied to form a conducting circle 
etween the opposite poles. The electric action of the fish 
spends entirely on its will; because it does not keep its 
e ectric organs always charged, or whether by the secretion 
s ome fluid, or by any other means alike mysterious to us. 
