Note 43 — ON STEPPES AND DESERTS.
Henry G. (Henry George) Bohn translation
p. 18.—“Awakened by the contact of moist and dissimilar particles.”
In all organic bodies dissimilar substances come into 140contact with each other, and solids are associated with fluids. Wherever there is organization and life, there must be electric tension, or, in other words, a voltaic pile must be brought into play, as the experiments of Nobili and Matteucci, and more especially the late most admirable labours of Emil Dubois, teach us. The last-named physicist has succeeded in “manifesting the presence of the electric muscular current in living and wholly uninjured animal bodies:” he shows that “the human body, through the medium of a copper wire, can at will cause the magnetic needle at a distance to deflect first in one direction and then in another.”[HE] I have myself witnessed these movements produced at will, and have thus unexpectedly seen much light thrown on phenomena, to which I had laboriously and ardently devoted so many years of my earlier life.