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
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 LondonAldini, Giovanni
Science
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
Aldini, Giovanni
Electricity -- Early works to 1850
I then moistened both the ears with salt water, by the same method as
before, and inserted into each an extremity of one of the arcs. When
the Galvanism was communicated, the movements already described were
reproduced; but they appeared to be much more violent.
EXPERIMENT II.
A pile composed of a hundred pieces of silver and zinc (Plate II. fig.
2.) being employed, the tongue issued from the mouth four inches, and
re-entered it an inch, on each application of the arc; notwithstanding
the resistance opposed by the teeth which pressed against it: so that
after four or five applications of the arc it was entirely restored to
its usual situation.
I repeated this curious experiment several times at Bologna and Turin,
and lately at London before their Royal Highnesses the Prince of
Wales, the Duke of York, the Duke of Clarence, and the Duke of
Cumberland, who seemed to be much interested in my researches. I
showed them that the tongue returned without being touched, merely by
forming an arc between distant parts, such as the spinal marrow and
the cervical or nasal muscles. A person who held the extremity of the
tongue with a pair of pincers felt the effort it made to return every
time that the Galvanism was applied.
EXPERIMENT III.
With the same apparatus I suspended from the extremity of the
conducting arc the posterior half of a frog, by bending the iron wire
at right angles into a small elbow; and then, instead of making the
tongue touch the extremity of the arc, I brought it into contact with
one of the paws of the frog, while the other extremity of the wire
rested on the summit of the pile.
When this arrangement was made, I not only obtained the same
contractions in the head of the ox, but I observed also that when the
paw of the frog ceased to be in contact with the tongue, it was
attracted by the latter, which produced in it oscillations, so that it
formed a kind of Galvanometer; for the thighs of the small animal
diverged more or less according to the intensity of the fluid which
passed through them, and were restored to their former position when
the paw of the frog and the tongue of the ox were again brought into
contact. These oscillations continued about six minutes.
Suspecting, however, that the crural nerves might have some share in
these phænomena, independently of the pile, I cut these nerves, and
under similar conditions I obtained the same results.
EXPERIMENT IV.
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