Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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But These
Two Substances Have In Common The Great Quantity Of Arterial Blood
Which They Receive, And Which Is Deoxidated In Them.
We may again
remark, on this occasion, that an extreme activity in the functions of
the brain causes the blood to flow more abundantly towards the head,
as the energy of the movement of the muscles accelerates the
deoxidation of the arterial blood.
What a contrast between the
multitude and the diameter of the blood-vessels of the gymnotus, and
the small space occupied by its muscular system! This contrast reminds
the observer, that three functions of animal life, which appear in
other respects sufficiently distinct - the functions of the brain,
those of the electrical organ, and those of the muscles, all require
the afflux and concourse of arterial or oxygenated blood.
It would be temerity to expose ourselves to the first shocks of a very
large and strongly irritated gymnotus. If by chance a stroke be
received before the fish is wounded or wearied by long pursuit, the
pain and numbness are so violent that it is impossible to describe the
nature of the feeling they excite. I do not remember having ever
received from the discharge of a large Leyden jar, a more dreadful
shock than that which I experienced by imprudently placing both my
feet on a gymnotus just taken out of the water. I was affected during
the rest of the day with a violent pain in the knees, and in almost
every joint.
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