776 
G. LEO HAGEN BURGER. 
comes from the fact that some of them are ignorant of the whole 
nature of electricity, so far as basic principles are concerned. 
For example, some of them have not learned that electricity 
consists of many grades, a multitude I may say, and that the 
coarser grades are mainly used in galvanic or frictional elec¬ 
tricities. The finer or vital and psychic electricities or ethers 
can no more be measured by the aid of the galvonometer than 
the heat at the South Pole can be by the thermometer. 
In order to produce conscious sensation, the nervous ethers 
must necessarily pass and make a complete circuit, passing from 
the point of the body affected through the sensor nerves to the 
brain center, and back through the motor nerves to the starring 
point. Motor nerves , when acting normally, always carry these 
fine ethers from the brain and sensory nerves to the brain. You 
may ask why do not these ethers which produce sensation cause 
contraction of the muscles if they come back through the motor 
nerves ? Because to all evidences then the sensory forces are 
more strongly thermal than eleetrical , and heat of course, as we 
know, cannot contract anything, but expands. Sensory nerves, 
like motor nerves, have channels for heat and cold forces, both 
showing a quality in all things in the universe. To make this 
law of sensation clearer, let us for example, prick the end of our 
finger. For two reasons sensation is keener there than else¬ 
where : 
1. The sactile corpuscles are abundant. 
2. Electrical tension is always greater at points (a very im¬ 
portant factor to be remembered in modern surgery). 
The prick or impression made will send the ethers excitedly 
along the sensory nerves of the forearm to the brachial plexus 
and spinal column. Just before the latter they will be fired up 
anew by passing through the ganglion at the post root or spinal 
nerve, hut paysiologists claim they have discovered that after 
reaching the spinal column some of the sensory fibres pass on 
up to the brain, while others on the contrary pass downward 
along the spine and thus deflect the currents, so they reach the 
original starting point and cause sensation there and not at the 
