. Eight lectures on the signs of life from their electrical aspect . LECTURE VIII The Fallacy of the Electrodes—Water Transport at Anode or Kathode— Alteration of Resistance at Anode or Kathode. § 76. Review.—This lecture is to be partly retrospective, partly prospective. We shall pass under a rapid review the principal steps of our investigation, inspecting with most care what may appear to us to be weak points, rinding perhaps in those very weak points, points of attraction to further investiga- tion. The main principle and "motif" running through the in- vestigation has been that
. Eight lectures on the signs of life from their electrical aspect . LECTURE VIII The Fallacy of the Electrodes—Water Transport at Anode or Kathode— Alteration of Resistance at Anode or Kathode. § 76. Review.—This lecture is to be partly retrospective, partly prospective. We shall pass under a rapid review the principal steps of our investigation, inspecting with most care what may appear to us to be weak points, rinding perhaps in those very weak points, points of attraction to further investiga- tion. The main principle and "motif" running through the in- vestigation has been that the electrical responses to electrical stimulation are a token and measure of vitality in the objects selected for examination—in the retina, in the entire eyeball, in its crystalline lens, in the skin of animals, in the " skin" of plants, in all the living tissues of plants, in living tissues of animals; and in my last lecture, when I tried to show you how slowly and gradually the vitality of human skin is lost, I ventured to touch upon a fallacy that becomes specially apparent when one undertakes to follow the sign to its last discernible trace. It was lost to sight among accessory physical reactions, fortunately small as compared with the physiological reactions of full vigour, but quite unavoidable, since they are inherent to the apparatus we have to use, I mean the electrodes. And although I call your special atten- tion to the " Fallacy of the Electrodes" at this last stage, I should like to assure you that it has been carefully excluded in all the experiments you have witnessed, and that from the very outset of the investigation the possible simulation of a blaze-current by a polarisation at the electrodes has been con- sidered and excluded. You remember, no doubt, that we hardly 100 I
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