An electric bath is a 19th-century medical treatment in which high-voltage electrical apparatus was used for electrifying patients by causing an electric charge to build up on their bodies. In the US this process was known as Franklinization after Benjamin Franklin. The process became widely known after Franklin described it in the mid-18th century, but after that it was mostly practiced by quacks. Golding Bird brought it into the mainstream at Guy's Hospital in the mid-19th century and it fell into disuse in the early 20th century.
The source of electricity for an electric bath was usually a frictional electrical machine. The patient was seated on a wooden stool, and both the patient and the stool insulated from ground by a platform on glass legs or some other insulator. In some arrangements, the patient was lying down rather than seated. The patient was then charged with static electricity either by direct connection to one electrode of the generator (usually the positive), or else through electrostatic induction by holding a large electrode close to the patient's body. The electric tension applied was around 30–50 kV . [1] Treatment could take several hours. Following charging the patient was "bathed" in electricity, hence the name of the procedure. [2] This can be observed in a darkened room as a luminous discharge around the patient, especially at the hair and extremeties. [3]
The electric bath treatment was painless, but it caused the patient to warm and sweat, and the heart rate to increase. It also caused the hair to stand on end. [4] The electric bath could form a treatment in itself. It could also be the first stage in further treatment. A common procedure was to draw sparks from the patient after charging, especially from the spine. [5]
Electricity had been in use for medical treatment since the mid-18th century. However, this was mainly at the hands of quacks and charlatans, often promoting the treatment as a universal panacea. One notorious fringe practitioner using the electric bath was James Graham. [6] It was brought into the mainstream by Golding Bird at Guy's Hospital who ran the "electrifying room" there from 1836. This was not the first time electricity had been used as a treatment in a hospital, but Bird was the first to study its efficacy with scientific rigour. According to Thomas Addison, past hospital use had been "vague and indiscriminate". Bird was well aware of the need to overcome this bad reputation and convince his colleagues. In a series of Guy's Hospital Reports, Bird identified specific treatments for specific conditions based on case studies. [7] He was quick to highlight conditions that could not be treated so that his work was distinguished from the charlatans. Nevertheless, electrotherapy was usually considered a treatment of last resort when all else had failed. [8]
Bird's most common use of the electric bath was to use the electric charge on the patient to draw off sparks by placing another electrode near the point of treatment. He used this method on the spine of chorea sufferers with some success. [9] Another condition for which Bird used this treatment was wrist drop caused by lead poisoning. [10] Bird found that there were some conditions for which this treatment did not work, mostly conditions where the brain or nervous system had been damaged such as epilepsy. [11]
The process of charging up a patient with static electricity was called Franklinization after Benjamin Franklin briefly experimented in this field. He attempted to treat a number of paralytics, first with electric shocks, and then with static charging, but without much success. He described these procedures in a letter of 1757. [12] Franklinization could also be applied locally to a wound or specific patch of skin with a hand-held array of needle electrodes. The intention was often to generate a "static breeze", a wind of ionized air over the skin. Alternatively, the intention could be to breathe in the ionized air as a form of ozone therapy. [13]
Electric bath apparatus for medical use were still for sale as late as 1908. [14]
Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta was an Italian physicist and chemist who was a pioneer of electricity and power and is credited as the inventor of the electric battery and the discoverer of methane. He invented the voltaic pile in 1799, and reported the results of his experiments in 1800 in a two-part letter to the president of the Royal Society. With this invention Volta proved that electricity could be generated chemically and debunked the prevalent theory that electricity was generated solely by living beings. Volta's invention sparked a great amount of scientific excitement and led others to conduct similar experiments, which eventually led to the development of the field of electrochemistry.
An electric current is a flow of charged particles, such as electrons or ions, moving through an electrical conductor or space. It is defined as the net rate of flow of electric charge through a surface. The moving particles are called charge carriers, which may be one of several types of particles, depending on the conductor. In electric circuits the charge carriers are often electrons moving through a wire. In semiconductors they can be electrons or holes. In an electrolyte the charge carriers are ions, while in plasma, an ionized gas, they are ions and electrons.
Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwell's equations. Common phenomena are related to electricity, including lightning, static electricity, electric heating, electric discharges and many others.
Electrochemistry is the branch of physical chemistry concerned with the relationship between electrical potential difference and identifiable chemical change. These reactions involve electrons moving via an electronically-conducting phase between electrodes separated by an ionically conducting and electronically insulating electrolyte.
Electric charge is the physical property of matter that causes it to experience a force when placed in an electromagnetic field. Electric charge can be positive or negative. Like charges repel each other and unlike charges attract each other. An object with no net charge is referred to as electrically neutral. Early knowledge of how charged substances interact is now called classical electrodynamics, and is still accurate for problems that do not require consideration of quantum effects.
A Leyden jar is an electrical component that stores a high-voltage electric charge between electrical conductors on the inside and outside of a glass jar. It typically consists of a glass jar with metal foil cemented to the inside and the outside surfaces, and a metal terminal projecting vertically through the jar lid to make contact with the inner foil. It was the original form of the capacitor.
In electrical engineering, ground or earth may be a reference point in an electrical circuit from which voltages are measured, a common return path for electric current, or a direct physical connection to the Earth.
An Oudin coil, also called an Oudin oscillator or Oudin resonator, is a resonant transformer circuit that generates very high voltage, high frequency alternating current (AC) electricity at low current levels, used in the obsolete forms of electrotherapy around the turn of the 20th century. It is very similar to the Tesla coil, with the difference being that the Oudin coil was connected as an autotransformer. It was invented in 1893 by French physician Paul Marie Oudin as a modification of physician Jacques Arsene d'Arsonval's electrotherapy equipment and used in medical diathermy therapy as well as quack medicine until perhaps 1940. The high voltage output terminal of the coil was connected to an insulated handheld electrode which produced luminous brush discharges, which were applied to the patient's body to treat various medical conditions in electrotherapy.
Electrotherapy is the use of electrical energy as a medical treatment. In medicine, the term electrotherapy can apply to a variety of treatments, including the use of electrical devices such as deep brain stimulators for neurological disease. The term has also been applied specifically to the use of electric current to speed wound healing. Additionally, the term "electrotherapy" or "electromagnetic therapy" has also been applied to a range of alternative medical devices and treatments. Evidence supporting the effectiveness of electrotherapy is limited.
An electrostatic generator, or electrostatic machine, is an electrical generator that produces static electricity, or electricity at high voltage and low continuous current. The knowledge of static electricity dates back to the earliest civilizations, but for millennia it remained merely an interesting and mystifying phenomenon, without a theory to explain its behavior and often confused with magnetism. By the end of the 17th century, researchers had developed practical means of generating electricity by friction, but the development of electrostatic machines did not begin in earnest until the 18th century, when they became fundamental instruments in the studies about the new science of electricity.
Electrochemistry, a branch of chemistry, went through several changes during its evolution from early principles related to magnets in the early 16th and 17th centuries, to complex theories involving conductivity, electric charge and mathematical methods. The term electrochemistry was used to describe electrical phenomena in the late 19th and 20th centuries. In recent decades, electrochemistry has become an area of current research, including research in batteries and fuel cells, preventing corrosion of metals, the use of electrochemical cells to remove refractory organics and similar contaminants in wastewater electrocoagulation and improving techniques in refining chemicals with electrolysis and electrophoresis.
An electric spark is an abrupt electrical discharge that occurs when a sufficiently high electric field creates an ionized, electrically conductive channel through a normally-insulating medium, often air or other gases or gas mixtures. Michael Faraday described this phenomenon as "the beautiful flash of light attending the discharge of common electricity".
William Bennet Kouwenhoven, also known as the "Father of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation," is famous for his contributions to the development of the closed-chest cardiac massage and his invention of the cardiac defibrillator. After obtaining his doctorate degree in engineering from the Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule in Germany, Kouwenhoven began his career as the dean at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Kouwenhoven focused his research mainly on improving and saving lives of patients through the application of electricity. With the help and cooperation of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine's Department of Surgery and an Edison Electric Institute grant, Kouwenhoven was able to develop a closed-chest defibrillator. For his contributions to the field of medical science, he became the first ever recipient of an honorary degree conferred by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Two years before his death, Kouwenhoven was also awarded the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research.
Henry Letheby was an English analytical chemist and public health officer.
An interrupter in electrical engineering is a device used to interrupt the flow of a steady direct current for the purpose of converting a steady current into a changing one. Frequently, the interrupter is used in conjunction with an inductor to produce increased voltages either by a back emf effect or through transformer action. The largest industrial use of the interrupter was in the induction coil, the first transformer, which was used to produce high voltage pulses in scientific experiments and to power arc lamps, spark gap radio transmitters, and the first X-ray tubes, around the turn of the 20th century. Its largest use was the contact breaker or "points" in the distributor of the ignition system of gasoline engines, which served to periodically interrupt the current to the ignition coil producing high voltage pulses which create sparks in the spark plugs. It is still used in this application.
Golding Bird was a British medical doctor and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. He became a great authority on kidney diseases and published a comprehensive paper on urinary deposits in 1844. He was also notable for his work in related sciences, especially the medical uses of electricity and electrochemistry. From 1836, he lectured at Guy's Hospital, a well-known teaching hospital in London and now part of King's College London, and published a popular textbook on science for medical students called Elements of Natural Philosophy.
The Pulvermacher chain, or in full as it was sold the Pulvermacher hydro-electric chain, was a type of voltaic battery sold in the second half of the 19th century for medical applications. Its chief market was amongst the numerous quack practitioners who were taking advantage of the popularity of the relatively new treatment of electrotherapy, or "electrification" as it was then known. Its unique selling point was its construction of numerous linked cells, rendering it mechanically flexible. A variant intended to be worn wrapped on parts of the body for long periods was known as Pulvermacher's galvanic chain or electric belt.
Franklin's electrostatic machine is a high-voltage static electricity-generating device used by Benjamin Franklin in the mid-18th century for research into electrical phenomena. Its key components are a glass globe which turned on an axis via a crank, a cloth pad in contact with the spinning globe, a set of metal needles to conduct away the charge developed on the globe by its friction with the pad, and a Leyden jar – a high-voltage capacitor – to accumulate the charge. Franklin's experiments with the machine eventually led to new theories about electricity and inventing the lightning rod.
The London Electrical Society was established in 1837 to enable amateur electricians to meet and share their interests in “experimental investigation of Electrical Science in all its various branches”. Although it initially flourished the society soon showed weaknesses in its organisation and ways of working. After a period of considerable financial difficulty it closed in 1845.