If a person who is
standing receive a charge through the spine, he loses his power over
the muscles to such a degree, that he either drops on his knees, or
falls prostrate on the ground; if the charge be sufficiently powerful,
it will produce immediate death, in consequence, probably, of the
sudden exhaustion of the whole energy of the nervous system. Small
animals, such as mice and sparrows, are instantly killed by a shock
from thirty square inches of glass. Van Marum found that eels are
irrecoverably deprived of life when a shock is sent through their
whole body; but when only a part of the body is included in the
circuit, the destruction of irritability is confined to that
individual part, while the rest retains the power of motion. Different
persons are affected in very different degrees by electricity,
according to their peculiar constitutional susceptibility. Dr. Young
remarks, that a very minute tremor, communicated to the most elastic
parts of the body, in particular the chest, produces an agitation of
the nerves, which is not wholly unlike the effect of a weak
electricity.
The bodies of animals killed by electricity, rapidly undergo
putrefaction, and the action of electricity upon the flesh of animals
is also found to accelerate this process in a remarkable degree.
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