Nor was I more fortunate in searching the writers upon Gal-vanism, as it is commonly termed, in which also I found my-self baffled in the hopes which I had cherished.

In the great and immortal physiological work of Haller,which may be considered as forming the pandect of that study,all that is said upon the subject is contained within the shortlimit of a remark of three words, namely, “irritabilitate linguagaudet,” Originalzitat: „Nam & et irritabilitate lingua gaudet, & et mobilitate, & et fibras habet sibi parallelas.“ Albrecht von Haller: De partium corporis humani praecipuarum fabrica et functionibus opus quinquaginta annorum. Bd. 7. Bern/Lausanne: Ex prelis societatum typographicarum, 1778. S. 310. - the tongue possesses irritability

De corporis humani Fabricâ et Functionibus, t. vii. p. 310.

As nothing, therefore, was to be gained by consulting authors,I began the more diligently to observe for myself, and, wheneveran opportunity presented, cut out the tongues of warm-bloodedanimals, which had been killed for other purposes, of dogs, cats,goats, sheep and rabbits, and in all these, although there wasa considerable difference in different individuals, even of thesame species, I was struck with the irritability of the yet warmtongue, under the excitement of chemical as well as mechanicalstimuli; of which experiment I may adduce one in the presentplace, as exactly corresponding with the description of Ovid.

I had the tongue of a four-year-old ox, which had been killedin the common way, by opening the large vessels of the neck,cut out in my presence, while yet warm, and at the same timethe heart, in order that I might compare the oscillatory motionof this organ, which is by far the most irritable that we are ac-quainted with, with the motion of the tongue. And when I ex-cited both viscera at the same time by the same mechanical sti-muli, namely incisions of a knife, and pricks of a needle, the di-vided tongue appeared to all the bystanders to survive theheart, by more than seven minutes, and to retain the oscillationsof its fibres altogether for a quarter of an hour; and so vividwere the movements, when I cut across the fore part of thetongue, that the butcher’s wife compared them to those of aneel in a similar condition, quite in the way that Ovid has com-pared them to the motions of the tail of a mutilated snake.

To these observations made upon animals, I may add here asimilar one made upon the human tongue itself, the knowledgeof which I owe to my excellent friend and much respected col-league, Reimar.