Experiments on Animal Electricity

Dr Hughes Bennett, at the request of the Council, performed several experiments with a view of showing how, in modern times, physiology was successfully investigated by means of newly invented instruments. He noticed especially the subject of animal electricity, stating, that a specimen of the Melapterurus beninensis which had been forwarded to him from Old Calabar in Africa, had been preserved for eighteen months in one of the hot-houses of the Botanic Garden of this city. Unfortunately, it died only that afternoon. He regretted that the arrangements he had made for showing the electrical currents in muscles and nerves had failed, in consequence of the injury which had been inflicted on two of the delicate galvanometers, recently invented by Sir W. Thomson, in their transit from the University to the Society's Rooms. He proceeded, however, to show the influence of continued and interrupted streams of electricity, on muscles and nerves.