Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/89

Rh During these performances she kept up a low, nervous giggle, and did not seem especially fatigued at the close.

Other Georgia women developed similar powers about the same time, or shortly after Miss Hurst's peculiarity became known. Miss Mattie L. Price, living in the same neighborhood, was one of these, and Mrs. C. F. Coleman, wife of the superintendent of the Atlanta cotton-factory, was another.

These accounts all appear the more credible from the fact that an examination proves every human being, and in fact every animal organism, to be in some degree a producing battery of electricity. Du Bois-Reymond, Nobili, and Matteucci have, by numerous experiments, determined the existence of electric currents in the nerves and muscles; by means of delicate tests, Becquerel has detected electricity in the capillaries and other minute tissues; Engelmann, Volkmann, Hermann, and others, have experimentally determined something of the conditions under which various tissue-currents are manifested; and it is more than probable that this subtile fluid is being constantly generated in the processes of digestion, circulation, respiration, and secretion.

The electric fishes—the torpedo, the silurus, the gymnotus, and the ray—are the only animals, it is true, possessing a special apparatus for the production of electricity; yet the cell-structure and disks of their batteries have been developed from ordinary cells and tissues common to animal life. Other animals sometimes evince like powers. An acquaintance of the writer, some years ago, in California, came upon a splendid specimen of rattlesnake which he determined to capture. With a forked stick he succeeded in pinning his snakeship to the ground just as he had reached a hole. The snake seemed to be securely caught, but with a convulsive effort he not only entered the hole, but gave my friend an electric shock which he recalls as one of the strongest he ever received.

We are largely ignorant of the conditions necessary to the storage of this force in the human organism, but good health seems to be one. When their power is dissipated by repeated shocks, electric fish exhibit all the lassitude of weary human beings. The writer once handled a gymnotus, in Fulton Market, whose shock was hardly perceptible; yet, when vigorous, they are known to kill horses and mules by their powerful discharges.

It is said that any person in good health may convert his lower extremities into electric batteries, by wearing two pairs of silk stockings, preferably a black pair over white. After wearing them but a short time and removing them together, an attempt to separate the two colors will manifest a resistance of several pounds.

Atmospheric conditions have much to do with electricity in the body. In several cases, notably those of Angélique Cottin