HUMAN STORAGE BATTERIES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 33, 8 February 1905, Page 10

HUMAN STORAGE BATTERIES.

Recent investigations by Dr. .lacques ' Loeb and others seem to point to tbe conclusion that the nerve centres of tlie human body arc in a true sense storage j batteries charged with electrical energy. That nerve energy is electrical has been pretty well demonstrated, and it is not. unreasonable to imagine that what we call fatigue may be dun to the temporary exhaustion of the batterypower. \Vhcu a muscle is tired il is not the muscular fibres lhat have given out. but merely the nerve that enerpiscs the muscle. —a proposition which applies to the whole body, as well as to auv pur't of ii. The balteries contained in the '"wings" of the fish known as the "torpedo ray." which is able to inflict a shock that will stun a man or a horse, arc regarded by anatomists as modified mils. les. They are composed of an arrangement of cells, corresponding to small Leyde.n jars, in which electricity is stored through the medium of the nervous system—a fact proved by the circumstance that, when the connecting nerves are severed, the organs lose their power to give, a shock. These organs, in fact, are true .storage batteries, and the supply of electricity they contain can be exhausted by provoking the animal repeatedly to let. loose its lightning. It is much the same way with the socalled '"electric eel." and with a species of catfish which is likewise a dealer in small thunderbolts. Unlike the torpedo- ray. both of these fishes carry their storage batteries in their tails, but the structure, is in its essential element* the same. Their supply of electricity is derived from the nerve centres, and the electrical organs cease to act when the. nerves connecting them with the brain are cut. Observation of the phenomena described makes obvious tbe. close relation between electricity and nerve energy. When tbe human body is at rest, the storage liafcteries which we call the nerve centres are slowly charged, so that, when one gets up in tbe morning after a good night's sleep, he is in condition to undertake a day's work. During the course of the day. if one is husily employed, the supply of energy is gradually dissipated, and by la'e evening so much of it may lie gone that natmv demands another period of repose in order to refill the battery cells. Such, though the theory is as yet more or Icks speculative, is the belief toward which science at present is leaning.