Note 377 — Chapter IV · THE FOURTH VISITATION OF THE DISEASE.—1528, 1529. (continued 2)

That a rheumatic state makes the body an isolator, A. von Humboldt discovered as early as 1793, and he found that the observation was confirmed by subsequent experiments. “I have observed in myself that, when labouring under a severe attack of catarrhal fever, I was unable, by the most powerful metals, to excite the galvanic flash before my eyes; that I interrupted every connecting link between the muscular and nervous apparatus. As the rheumatic malady lessens the irritability of organs, so also it seems to diminish their conducting power. How is this? As yet nothing is known about it. I have every now and then met with isolating persons who were in perfect health, but can we not yet, amidst such an ocean of uncertainty, discover a condition by which we may determine every case?” Versuche in Vol. I. p. 159. Pfaff believes that, during the existence of rheumatic diseases, the proper electricity of the body sinks down to nothing. See his Essay on the peculiar Electricity of the Human Body in Mechel’s Archiv. Vol. III. No. 2. p. 161.