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
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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
Aldini, Giovanni
Electricity -- Early works to 1850
Having put into glass vessels four ounces of blood recently drawn from
the vein of a person in good health, I left one of them exposed to the
contact of the atmospheric air, and subjected the other to the action
of the pile. In both these portions I observed a speedy coagulation of
the crassamentum, and at the end of twenty-four hours the serous part
was separated. The blood exposed to the action of the pile adhered so
strongly to the two wires immersed in it, that it was difficult to
separate them from the clot which was thus suspended in the aqueous
fluid, but in the other vessel the clot remained at the bottom.
EXPERIMENT II.
I put two equal portions of bile, still warm, taken from the
gall-bladder of an ox, into two glass vessels, exposed one of them to
the contact of the air, and subjected the other to the action of the
pile. After ten hours had elapsed, I observed that the bile in the
latter had become so opake as no longer to afford a passage to the
light; while the other portion, exposed to the atmosphere, retained
its transparency and colour. I observed also a considerable
disengagement of air, the nature of which I have not yet had an
opportunity of examining.
EXPERIMENT III.
I took four ounces of urine, voided by a man in good health, exposed
it to the action of the pile, and at the end of twenty-four hours
found that the greater part of its constituent principles was
separated. A portion of them was collected around the wires in such a
manner as to form cylindric bodies of a considerable diameter, of
which the wires were the axes. As the mass of the attracted matters
increased, a portion fell to the bottom by its own weight. The
cylinders were soon entirely destroyed, and the substances which
formed them were precipitated by the least shock given to the vessel.
I repeated this experiment lately in Mr. Wilson’s anatomical theatre
in Windmill-street; and I observed, at the end of eighteen hours, a
great quantity of the moleculæ furnished by the urine adhering to the
two wires. But at length, not being able to withstand the effect of
its gravitation, it began to fall down, forming a sort of wedge, the
apex of which was at the surface of the urine, and the base at the
bottom of the vessel.
EXPERIMENT IV.
Instead of putting the urine into a common apparatus, if a glass
syphon with two platina wires be employed (Plate III. fig. 5.), the
urine becomes limpid on the one side, and turbid on the other. The
substance detached from the urine afterwards appears in the form of
flakes, which are attracted by the platina wires. I observed this
phænomenon for the first time in the company of those celebrated
chemists Fourcroy and Vauquelin, while they were performing Galvanic
experiments in their own laboratory.
EXPERIMENT V.
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