Читать книгу An Account of the Late Improvements in Galvanism - Giovanni Aldini - Страница 15

Mere electrization, by means of the common kinds of apparatus, does not increase the action of Galvanism.

EXPERIMENT I.

Artificial electricity was communicated to an apparatus, composed of a hundred cups, care being first taken to insulate the table and the persons who were afterwards to receive the action of it. If we suppose that the heterogeneous arcs were charged with different kinds of electricity, it would seem that, by communicating to them any electricity, the electricity of the whole apparatus ought to have been reduced to the same kind; consequently that no shock ought to have been produced. The contrary, however, was the case. We experienced very strong shocks, very little different from those which would have been obtained without artificial electricity. I observed the same result with the pile.

EXPERIMENT II.

An insulated torpedo being electrified, the shocks it gave were not increased. The torpedo was killed, and then armed, according to the method of Galvani, for the purpose of trying whether metallic electricity, in this case, would have any influence over it. After this arrangement was made, every time that the conducting arc was applied to it strong contractions were produced; but very little different from those remarked in other animals. This observation is agreeable to those made at Naples by the celebrated Abilgaard, who, having subjected the torpedo to the Galvanic processes, found no extraordinary contractions.