We shall not here speak of the astonishment with which the spectators were struck when they saw the contractions of the frontal muscles, those of the eye-lids, the face, the lower jaw, and the tongue; when they beheld the convulsions of the muscles of the arms, the breast, and of the back, which raised the trunk some inches from the table; the contractions of the pectoral muscles, and the exterior and interior intercostal muscles, which diminished the intervals between all the ribs, and made them approach each other with violence, raising the inferior ones towards the superior, and the latter towards the first rib and the clavicle; the contractions of the arms, which, when the uncovered biceps muscle was touched, as well as its tendon, were so speedy and violent, that complete flexion of the fore-arm on the arm took place, and that the hand raised weights of some pounds fifty minutes after decapitation. Similar experiments may be seen in the work of Aldini: our object in this report was merely to speak of the Galvanic influence on the heart and arteries of man, which had not yet been observed. These new and important results, which we obtained in regard to the heart and arteries of man, will be confirmed by other trials. We shall repeat our experiments as soon as an opportunity occurs, and we shall take care to give you an early account of the most remarkable observations we shall make. [15] Mezzini, Volta, Valli, Klein, Pfaff, Berhends, have denied that the heart could be moved by the Galvanic fluid. _Hist. du Galvanisme_, part i. p. 145. Bichat could obtain no contractions either in the heart of man or that of the dog. See _Récherches Physiologiques sur la Vie et la Mort_. [16] Towards the end of the First Part. [17] See _Histoire du Galvanisme_, vol. ii. p. 81. [18] Ibid. vol. ii. p. 84. [19] Vol. ii. p. 83. [20] Saggio di Sperienze sul Galvanismo di Giovani Aldini; Bolonia 1802, p. 14, esp. 28. [21] If the celebrated Bichat failed in his experiments on the human heart, as well as Aldini, it was, perhaps, owing to the same causes. The temperature was cold, and the interval between the time of execution and that of the experiment too long. “I was authorized,” says Bichat, “in the winter of the year 7, to make various trials on the bodies of unfortunate persons who had been guillotined. I had them at my disposal from thirty to forty minutes after execution. It was always impossible for me to produce the least motion by arming either the spinal marrow and the heart, or the latter organ and the nerves which it receives from the ganglions by the sympathetic, or from the brain by the par vagum.” No. III. _Account of an experiment made at Calais, on the transmission of Galvanism through an arm of the sea. By_ J. ALDINI.