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An Account of the Late Improvements in Galvanism: With a Series of Curious and Interesting Experiments Performed Before the Commissioners of the French National Institute, and Repeated Lately in the Anatomical Theatres of London — John Shaqi

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An Account of the Late Improvements in Galvanism: With a Series of Curious and Interesting Experiments Performed Before the Commissioners of the French National Institute, and Repeated Lately in the Anatomical Theatres of London

Name: An Account of the Late Improvements in Galvanism: With a Series of Curious and Interesting Experiments Performed Before the Commissioners of the French National Institute, and Repeated Lately in the Anatomical Theatres of London
Author: Aldini, Giovanni

Aldini, Giovanni

Electricity -- Early works to 1850

The ingenious theory of Girtanner, who ascribes the cause of muscular
contractions to oxygen, the curious experiments by which Professor
Humboldt revives the muscular force, by means of oxygenated muriatic
acid, and those made by the celebrated Fourcroy on the same subject,
induced me to examine the effect resulting from a combination of
oxygen with muscular fibres, in a state of the greatest vitality. For
this purpose, I adapted to a bell-glass a bent metallic wire, from
which were suspended fourteen frogs, prepared with the utmost
dispatch, and almost at the same instant, by myself and several of my
pupils; and having formed an insulated plenum, I found, at the end of
twenty-four hours, that the water had risen in the bell to the height
of about half an inch.


EXPERIMENT VII.

I repeated this experiment, with the same success, on warm-blooded
animals. I provided, for that purpose, the extremities of different
pullets from which the crural nerves had been previously separated,
and found that the elevations of the water, in the insulated plenum,
were much less when I employed the fibres of these animals after their
vitality had been weakened.


EXPERIMENT VIII.

Having obtained the bodies of some executed criminals, I exposed to
the action of an insulated plenum the nervous and muscular fibres, and
the substance of the brain. The elevations of the water were
remarkable, in consequence of the different substances subjected to
experiment, which, according to their different characters, exercised
a different action on the oxygen. This fact ought to induce
physiologists to undertake experiments of a similar kind with other
gases, to enable them to determine the strength of the affinity
exerted by animal substances to combine with oxygen.


EXPERIMENT IX.

As fishes, and in particular the torpedo, furnish a large quantity of
animal or Galvanic electricity, I was inclined to think they would
exhibit the before-mentioned effects in a very striking manner in an
insulated plenum. I mentioned to Professor Mojon of Genoa the
experiment I proposed to make; and, in a letter which I lately
received from him, he informed me of the result, as follows:

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An Account of the Late Improvements in Galvanism: With a Series of Curious and Interesting Experiments Performed Before the Commissioners of the French National Institute, and Repeated Lately in the Anatomical Theatres of London

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