The Retrospectroscope

Albert W, Kuhfeld

Medical Electricity I: Electrostatics

Scribonius Largus, physician to the Roman emperor Claudius, said: For any type of gout a live black torpedo should, when the pain begins, be placed under the feet. The patient must stand on a moist shore washed by the sea and he should stay like this until his whole foot and leg up to the knee is numb. This takes away present pain and prevents pain from coming on if it has not already arisen.
But the modem history of medical electricity begins with the electrostatic generator, invented by either Otto von Guericke (1663) or Francis Hauksbee the Elder (1706). Much depends upon your views of intent: Hauksbee specifically noted Elistricity, while von Guericke never used the word. Rather, von Guericke discussed the nature of the Universe, using a sulfur sphere as a model. The sphere, rubbed by his hand, created effects we recognize today as electrical. Von Guerickes sulfur globe died without issue. Modern electrical machines derive from a 1675 observation by the French astronomer, Jean Picard. While moving a mercury barometer in the dark, he noticed a glow in the evacuated tube above the mercury. News of this mercurial phosphor reached the Royal Society in London, where Hauksbee used a spinning, evacuated glass globe mounted on a lathe bed to study Picards glow. He recreated the glow-and noted, when his hand rubbed the globe as it spun, strong electrical attraction of threads and other light bodies. Georg Matthias Bose began his electrical experiments in 1734, and in 1737 began using a spinning glass globe after the fashion of Hauksbee. In 1743 he used a tinplate telescope tube to store his electricity, thus inventing the prime conductor of most later electrostatic generators. Also in 1743, Johann Heinrich Winkler added a friction cushion to the spinning globe. This completed the invention of the frictional electrostatic generator. Later deJonuory/February 1995

Otto von Guerickes sulfur globe (1663). The small object, a*, is a feather held aloft by electrostatic repulsion.
velopments improved the form and configuration, but did not add to the substance. Stephen Gray was the first person to apply electricity specifically to the human body. In 1730 he electrified a boy of eight or nine years of age, suspended in the air by silk cords. Gray was studying the various substances that could conduct electricity; this experiment showed the human body was one of them. Charles FranGois de Cisternay du Fay was the first important theoretician, and an experimenter who noted the sting of an electrical spark upon his own body. Johann Gottlob Kruger at the Lutheran University of Helmstadt first suggested the use of electricity in medicine. In 1743 he said

One of Francis Hauksbee the Elders electrostatic generators,from his 1709 book.
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matic complaints in young persons, and that he had been surprised by the variety of things that electricity would do.
Perhaps the most surprising thing electricity would do was restore the dead to life. In his 1788 Essay upon the Recovery of the Apparently Dead, Charles Kite recommended electrical shocks from a Leydenjar capacitor, applied to the chest. He noted electricitys powerful effect upon the human frame:

And are we not justified in presuming, that if it is able so powerfully to excite the action of the external muscles, that it will be capable of reproducing the motion of the heart, which is infinitely more irritable, and by that means accomplish our great desideratum, the renewal of the circulation?

Electrostaticgenerator combining the work of Hauksbee, Bose, and Winkler; from Priestleys 1769 History. the subtle electrical effluvium, passing through the human body, might cause changes in the most deepseated parts to restore or maintain health. The Swiss physician Jean Jallabert used shock to effect the first reliably-documentedelectro-curein the winter of 1747-1748.His patient was a locksmith with a paralyzed forearm and hand. Jallabert insulated the patient on wax, electrified him, and drew sparks from the various muscles of the forearm. He noticed the muscles convulsed. With warmth, massage, and electrostimulation, he strengthened the extensors of the wrist and fingers. The experiments began using only the body as a capacitor, but progressed to the use of a Leyden jar. Treatment ended in March. The locksmith had regained complete use of his hand, all the muscles had increased in size and firmness, and the limb was no longer emaciated. Richard Lovett, a lay clerk at Worcester Cathedral, was an early experimenter with medical electricity. Around 1749 he began to use what were to become the three standard methods of applying medical electricity: simple electrification with the patient insulated on cakes of resin (the electric bath), the drawing of sparks (the method of sparks), and the administration of shocks from a Leyden jar (the method of commotion). Jallabert had used sparks and commotion on his locksmith a year earlier, and Nollet was experimenting with the electric bath. Another famous clerical advocate was John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, who drew examples in his book (The Desideratum ...) from many sources, chief of whom was Lovett. Rowbottom and Susskind note:

Defibrillatorfrom Kites 1788 Essay Upon the Recovery of the Apparently Dead. Leyden jar c could store electrical energy on the order of tens of joules.
(KitesEssay ...,I might add, was areview article. He mentioned several successful resuscitations to bolster his arguments.) The eighteenth century saw the creation and refinement of the electrostatic generator, and its use in medicine for muscular stimulation and relief of pain-even a treatment we recognize today as defibrillation or cardioversion. As the century drew to a close, medical electricity would return to its animal origins-not fish this time, but frogs. That will be the subject of the next Retrospectroscope.

References
1. Dibner, Bern Early Electrical Machines, Nonvalk, ( 3 , 1957. 2. Guericke, Otto yon, Experimenra nova ..., Amsterdam, 1672. 3. Hackmann, Willem, Electriciryfrom Glass, Sijthoff & Noordhoff, Alphen aan den Rijn, The Netherlands, 1978. 4. Hauksbee, Francis, Physico-Mechanical Experiments ..., London, 1709. 5. Kite, Charles, An Essay Upon the Recovery of the Apparently Dead, London, 1788. 6. Lovett, Richard, The subtil medium provd .._, London, 1756. 7. Priestley, Joseph, The History and Present State of Electricity ..., London, 1769. 8. Rowbottom, Margaret and Susskind, Charles, Electricity and Medicine: History of Their Interaction, San Francisco Press, San Francisco, 1984. 9. Wesley, John, The Desideratum, Or Electricity Made Plain and Useful, 1759.

Atfirstsight his claims appear to be those of a typical quack, but the majority of the conditions he treated do fall under headings later reported by responsible medical men as benefitted or cured by electrical treatment. Among them were various rheumatic states, severe headaches and pains in the head, the dissipution of swellings sometimes associated with theformation of pus, and a number of hysterical conditions such as convulsive fits. I...] Lovett remarked that treatment seldom failed in rheu-

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Janwry/February 1995