WEBVTT - The Shocking History of Electricity in Medicine 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.240 Welcome to text Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:13.960 How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff. 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:17.159 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:19.760 I Heart Radio and I love all things tech and 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:23.759 I was recently listening to an episode of a different podcast, 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:28.560 the podcast Sawbones, in which wife and husband team Sydney 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:32.080 and Justin McElroy discussed some of the ways we humans 0:00:32.080 --> 0:00:37.199 have tried to treat medical issues using a limited understanding 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:41.960 of those issues and the various treatments we were applying. 0:00:42.520 --> 0:00:45.440 So they've done tons of episodes on stuff like blood 0:00:45.520 --> 0:00:48.800 letting or trepid nation, and recently they did one on 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:52.400 the use of electricity as a means of treating medical issues, 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:54.840 and they do a great job, but I thought I 0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:56.840 would dive into it a little bit more and talk 0:00:56.920 --> 0:01:00.840 about how we built an understanding around electricity and then 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:05.160 how we made use of electricity to try and treat ourselves, 0:01:05.200 --> 0:01:09.600 sometimes not so well. And I'm looking really at the 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:12.839 early uses. I'll talk a little bit about modern uses 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:17.039 of electricity, but I'm mostly focusing on how we first 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:20.640 started applying electricity to medical uses. And I want to 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:23.160 keep in mind that we do still have electrotherapy today, 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:27.680 though it's still a matter of some mystery and confusion, 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:33.040 also largely because some people appropriate the term electrotherapy to 0:01:33.160 --> 0:01:38.160 pedal medically questionable products and services. So you've got more 0:01:38.240 --> 0:01:42.720 reputable sources that are attempting to determine whether or not 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:48.520 electrotherapy is a working means of treatment, and you have 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:51.640 other people who don't really concern themselves with that part. 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:56.440 They're just looking to sell stuff. And electricity is almost 0:01:56.440 --> 0:01:59.120 like magic to a lot of us. And also in 0:01:59.120 --> 0:02:05.080 this episode, I'll be focusing primarily on direct application of electricity. 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:09.960 It's pretty obvious that many medical procedures either depend directly 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:14.720 or indirectly on electricity and electrical instruments and equipment, and 0:02:14.760 --> 0:02:17.680 I'm not getting down all those pathways, though we should 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:20.280 understand their. Use of electricity in the medical field began 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:23.160 to emerge around the same time as our understanding of 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:27.480 other phenomena such as X rays and ultra violet rays, 0:02:27.520 --> 0:02:30.440 and so a lot of histories about electricity and medicine 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:33.520 also talk about these, And sure we could talk about 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:36.239 lots of different types of equipment, scanners, things like that, 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:40.560 instruments but I really want to talk about directly applying 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:44.960 electricity to the human body. Back to Sawbones, which I 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:47.640 should add is is not affiliated with the I Heart 0:02:47.720 --> 0:02:50.560 Radio network at all. Just in the interest of full disclosure, 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:53.560 I am a fan of Sawbones. I also have no 0:02:53.639 --> 0:02:59.960 connection with the macl roys tho. Hey guys, Sydney, Justin Griffin, 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:02.919 Travis if you if you want to chat, hit me up. 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:07.520 But the Sawbones episode was inspired by Benjamin Franklin, who 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:11.959 conducted famous experiments with electricity. If you are familiar with 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:15.680 Benjamin Franklin as a historical figure, you've probably heard about 0:03:15.720 --> 0:03:20.640 his experiment with the kite and the key during the thunderstorm. 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:23.000 So some of this episode will play into that a 0:03:23.000 --> 0:03:25.880 little bit. But our knowledge of electricity actually dates much 0:03:26.040 --> 0:03:29.840 further back than that founding father of the United States. 0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:32.880 You could even really say that humans were at least 0:03:32.919 --> 0:03:36.720 aware of electricity in some measure, just from the presence 0:03:36.760 --> 0:03:40.000 of lightning. Now, we didn't understand what it was, we 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:42.440 didn't have a name for it like electricity, and we 0:03:42.480 --> 0:03:45.040 didn't know how it was formed, but we knew it existed. 0:03:45.600 --> 0:03:47.920 We could see that, but it would take a long 0:03:47.960 --> 0:03:51.840 time to figure out what those bolts actually were. In fact, 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:55.360 during Benjamin Franklin's time, the thought was it was some 0:03:55.440 --> 0:03:57.960 form of fluid. In fact, that's why we get the 0:03:57.960 --> 0:04:03.120 word current, because of a flow of some sort of 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:08.600 electrical ether fluid stuff. Now, the earliest account that describes 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:12.120 one aspect of electricity, one that is going to be 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:16.960 very important for this discussion, comes from sales of Milita's 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:19.800 And I know I've butchered that name. My Greek is 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:23.280 worse than my Latin, which is terrible. But he was 0:04:23.320 --> 0:04:26.760 a Greek philosopher. Aristotle actually thought of him as the 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:31.320 first true philosopher, who was born in six hundred twenty 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:34.599 four b c e. And he asked a lot of questions, 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:37.240 which is what philosophers do. And these are questions that 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:40.239 had before his time largely been met with the answer 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:44.279 because the gods want it to be that way, you know, 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:48.160 like like lightning was Zeus's way of saying, hey, knock 0:04:48.240 --> 0:04:52.159 that crap off. But this philosopher was more inclined to 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:56.640 believe that there were less mythological explanations for certain phenomena 0:04:56.680 --> 0:05:00.320 there might be more natural and one could argue in 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:03.880 the future scientific explanations for those things, and one thing 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:06.440 he observed had to do with what we now know 0:05:06.880 --> 0:05:11.880 as static electricity. He wrote something that likely people had 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:14.840 already been observing for quite some time, which was if 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:18.320 you rubbed amber was something like animal fur. If you 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:21.640 did it vigorously enough, the fur would then start to 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:26.560 attract other stuff like moats of dust to it. Particles 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:30.200 would drift toward the fur. It was drawing stuff to it. 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:35.479 Stuff like blades of dried grass would move toward it, 0:05:35.920 --> 0:05:38.640 and there was some sort of power of attraction going 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:43.880 on that people just couldn't easily explain. But I can 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:47.640 do it now. To be fair, very smart people figured 0:05:47.680 --> 0:05:51.800 all this stuff out way way before I was ever born, 0:05:51.960 --> 0:05:55.120 and I just benefit from having been able to read 0:05:55.160 --> 0:05:58.560 about it. But it comes down to some basic features 0:05:58.560 --> 0:06:02.080 in atoms. So yeah, this is gonna get super super basic, 0:06:02.160 --> 0:06:04.200 and then we'll build up from there. You know, typical 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:09.800 text stuff approach. Atoms have neutrons, protons and electrons. Protons 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:13.760 have a positive charge, electrons have a negative charge, and 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:16.960 neutrons just want to get through the day without too 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:21.000 much hassle. Opposite charges attract each other, so a negative 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:26.600 charge attracts a positive charge Likewise, like charges repel each other. 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:30.280 So if you get to positively charged particles together, well, 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:32.120 you're gonna be spending a lot of energy because those 0:06:32.120 --> 0:06:35.520 positive charges are gonna push back against each other. Uh. 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:39.120 There are forces within the nucleus of an atom that 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:42.520 bind protons together, which is why they don't just fly 0:06:42.640 --> 0:06:46.960 apart from the fact that their charges are repelling each other. 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:50.920 With the amber and animal, for what's really going on 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:54.600 is a transfer of electrons from one material to the 0:06:54.600 --> 0:06:59.240 surface of another material. The animal for collects electrons from 0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:03.000 the amber and thus builds up a negative charge. This 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:06.200 charge is nowhere to go. It's static. There's no current 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:08.719 to flow through, there's no circuit there for it to 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:13.080 create a current. So if the negatively charged material makes 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:17.320 contact with something else, it can then release that electric charge. 0:07:17.320 --> 0:07:20.200 It can discharge, and that's when you get that little 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:23.120 snappy spark. It's also what happens if you rub your 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:25.840 feet against the carpet and then touch someone else or 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:28.800 something metal and you get that little shock. It's because 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:32.440 you've got this build up of electrons that you then 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:35.960 discharge when you come in contact with something that doesn't 0:07:36.040 --> 0:07:40.080 have that build up. So the animal fur with a 0:07:40.120 --> 0:07:43.720 negative charge will attract stuff that has a greater positive 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:47.240 charge than the fur does. So those dust moats have 0:07:47.400 --> 0:07:50.000 a slight positive charge to them, they're being attracted to 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:52.920 that negative charge. On a related note, if you've ever 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:56.120 seen a person's hair stand on end after taking off 0:07:56.120 --> 0:07:59.320 a hat, or if they're playing with an electrostatic generator, 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:05.160 that because the hairs get negatively charged, and because like 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:09.120 charges repel each other, the hairs are actually repelling one another. 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:13.160 They stand on end because they're attempting to get as 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:17.800 far away from each other as they possibly can. Uh, 0:08:18.000 --> 0:08:20.280 or so I'm told, I don't know. I've been bald 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:22.440 for twenty years. I have no idea what hair even 0:08:22.480 --> 0:08:26.200 does anymore. It never comes to visit doesn't even call 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:30.480 me anyway. While philosophers like the one I was just 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:33.560 mentioning observed phenomena like these, they had no way to 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:36.880 explain what was actually going on, and it remained a 0:08:37.000 --> 0:08:40.480 mystery for centuries, and no one yet had had been 0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:46.000 able to link this curious observation with more dramatic examples 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:49.280 like lightning. There was no way of saying these two 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:53.000 things are related. If we want to talk about therapy, well, 0:08:53.040 --> 0:08:59.199 there are actually some stories about ancient people using electrotherapy, 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:04.560 uh Pacrates or Hippocrates. If you prefer treated patients by 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:09.479 placing them in barrels filled with water and electric eels, 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:13.760 it's pretty primitive electrotherapy. He did that to treat stuff 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:17.079 like gout and rheumatism. I'm not sure to what effect, 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:19.760 because I ran out of time before I could really 0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:23.439 dig up more accounts of that particular therapy. Now we 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:27.080 probably get the word electricity thanks mainly to a fellow 0:09:27.160 --> 0:09:31.000 named William Gilbert. He was born in fifteen forty four 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:34.480 in England, and he became an astronomer and a physician. 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:37.920 He actually served Elizabeth the First at one point as 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:43.479 a court physician. He also wrote a work titled d Magnete, 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:47.800 which he published around six hundred. This work was filled 0:09:47.800 --> 0:09:52.160 with his observations on matters surrounding magnetism and electrical phenomena. 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:57.280 He differentiated between magnets and the attractive effect observed when 0:09:57.400 --> 0:10:02.360 using amber, sometimes helpfully called the amber effect. Gilbert said 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:06.520 these two things were similar but distinct phenomena that magnets 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:09.839 and this attractive force he was observing through electrostatic build 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:13.320 up were related somehow or similar in many ways, but 0:10:13.360 --> 0:10:17.680 they were not exactly the same thing. Later scientists would 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:21.840 determine that they are both manifestations of a single force, 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:25.760 that of electro magnetism, but they are distinct. So that 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:28.480 would be getting ahead of ourselves. Let's get back to Gilbert. 0:10:28.720 --> 0:10:32.520 He referred to the materials that were known for this 0:10:32.720 --> 0:10:38.960 static electricity effect as electricus. That is a new Latin word, 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:42.400 meaning it wasn't an existing Latin phrase. He actually took 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:46.480 a Greek word and then he sort of latinized it 0:10:47.080 --> 0:10:51.840 and he meant it to mean like amber. So electricus 0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:56.240 is like amber. The Greek word was electron, which meant 0:10:56.400 --> 0:10:59.200 amber itself. So he took a Greek word, made it 0:10:59.480 --> 0:11:04.520 sort of Latin and then got electricus. He described the 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:09.880 attractive force as an electric force. Another smarty pants named 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:13.640 Francis Bacon used the word electric to describe materials that 0:11:13.640 --> 0:11:17.760 could create this attractive force, and in sixteen forty six, 0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:21.760 Sir Thomas Brown went a step further and he coined 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:24.520 the word electricity. Now, in this case, it was a 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:28.079 word meant to describe a material's behavior or the property 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:34.040 of being electric, sort of like if you were elastic 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:38.960 you would describe the quality of elastic as elasticity. Well, 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:42.440 that was the case with electricity. It didn't mean a 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:45.440 current or a flow or anything. It was a way 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:50.880 of describing the tendency for material to be electric. Moving 0:11:50.920 --> 0:11:55.240 forward a century, two different people independently invented a device 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:59.640 capable of storing static electricity. One of those was evolved 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:03.560 joe Orge von Kleist, and together was Peter von muschen 0:12:03.640 --> 0:12:08.360 Brook And again i'm butchering names. Both of these guys 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:13.240 developed their version in the early seventeen forties, and the 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:16.840 basic device was pretty simple in its original form. It 0:12:16.920 --> 0:12:19.520 was a glass vial that had some water in it, 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:23.079 and the vial had a cork that capped the vial. 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:26.880 But piercing through the cork was a piece of metallic 0:12:26.960 --> 0:12:29.880 wire that was long enough to have one end of 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:32.439 it dipping into the water in the vial. The other 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:35.800 end would extend out from the end of the cork 0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:39.400 and it would be brought into contact with what was 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:43.000 called a friction device, essentially electrostatic generator. This was the 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:47.880 device meant to build up a static charge, and this 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:50.760 would transfer a build up of electrons to the wire, 0:12:51.160 --> 0:12:54.760 which they could then actually hold on to that that charge, 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:57.280 and it would hold onto it until you touched it 0:12:57.360 --> 0:12:59.559 to something that would allow it to complete a circuit, 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:02.760 and then it would discharge that electricity in a spark. 0:13:03.280 --> 0:13:06.880 So it was sort of like a very primitive capacitor. UH. 0:13:07.000 --> 0:13:10.360 This would end up being called a Leyden jar because 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:14.240 the area that it was that where it was being 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:18.280 invented was near Leyden in the Netherlands. UH and later 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:22.440 versions of it would end up using metallic components, not 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:25.160 just a glass vial filled with water, but the earliest 0:13:25.240 --> 0:13:28.760 versions were basically just that. Now this brings us to 0:13:28.800 --> 0:13:33.960 Benjamin Franklin. Franklin met with a doctor named Dr Spence, 0:13:34.080 --> 0:13:38.280 apparently who had traveled from Scotland. According to Franklin, there's 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:43.000 actually some scholastic debate over who Dr Spence might have been. 0:13:43.640 --> 0:13:47.679 Maybe he was Spencer, not Spence. Franklin got to see 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:51.040 a Leyden jar in action and he was fascinated by it, 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:55.480 and not long afterward, Peter Collinson of the Royal Society 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:59.480 of London sent Benjamin Franklin the equipment that he needed 0:13:59.520 --> 0:14:02.440 to make his own Leaden jar, and Franklin began doing 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:07.280 experiments and sussing out the nature of this electricity thing. Now, 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:11.080 some of those experiments involved using electricity to treat people 0:14:11.240 --> 0:14:14.960 with paralysis or people who were dealing with symptoms that 0:14:15.000 --> 0:14:18.439 they developed in the aftermath of a stroke. He observed 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:22.760 that some patients reported improvement and relief after receiving electro 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:26.520 static shocks, but he wrote in seventeen fifty seven to 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:30.880 the Royal Society that he quote never knew any advantages 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:34.640 from electricity in patients that were permanent end quote. So 0:14:34.680 --> 0:14:37.480 in other words, the effects he observed appeared to be 0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:40.880 temporary in nature. They did not seem to be a cure, 0:14:41.480 --> 0:14:45.120 although they might treat acute symptoms, and he couldn't really 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:48.840 explain what was going on. Also, I should add that 0:14:48.880 --> 0:14:53.520 Benjamin Franklin wasn't necessarily just doing this on his own, thinking, well, gosh, 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:56.000 I wonder what happens if I shock people who aren't 0:14:56.000 --> 0:14:59.560 feeling well? Will they feel better? This was sort of 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:01.920 an accut humulative approach. There were a lot of people 0:15:01.960 --> 0:15:05.440 who were speculating that electricity might be used for things 0:15:05.480 --> 0:15:09.120 that they had frankly run out of ideas as far 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:11.160 as how they could treat them. There were a lot 0:15:11.160 --> 0:15:15.480 of diseases and disorders that we just didn't know how 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:19.520 to treat. None of the conventional approaches seemed to work, 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:23.520 so it was almost a move of desperation. Now, Franklin 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:26.360 also went on to prove that lightning and the sparks 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:29.960 that he was seeing from these electro static discharges were 0:15:29.960 --> 0:15:33.880 in fact the same thing. Different orders of magnitude and strength, 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:36.440 but they were the same thing. He also invented the 0:15:36.520 --> 0:15:40.560 lightning rod to help protect houses against lightning strikes. Now, 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:44.440 speaking of the Royal Society, its members were also experimenting 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:47.680 with using electricity as a medical treatment for all sorts 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:52.040 of ailments, though primarily for things like paralysis, seizures, and 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:56.480 neurological disorders and diseases in general. The physicians of the 0:15:56.520 --> 0:16:00.240 eighteenth century who were inclined to try electricity as a 0:16:00.240 --> 0:16:04.160 means of treating these issues did so because more conventional 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:07.920 treatments were failing. This isn't quite like saying, well nothing 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:10.840 else worked, let's shock them. But it's not far from 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:13.600 that point of view, And we're still talking about discharging 0:16:13.640 --> 0:16:18.560 and electrostatic charge, so zapping someone not subjecting someone to 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:23.600 a prolonged, uninterrupted current of electricity, so this was usually 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:28.720 done with the zapp going to whatever area of the 0:16:28.760 --> 0:16:33.000 body was thought to be affected. So, depending upon the 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:36.680 disease or the disorder, the doctors would say, well, let's 0:16:36.760 --> 0:16:39.400 target let's say the liver, and they would deliver an 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:44.360 electric shocked toward the the person's abdomen in an effort 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:47.600 to shock the liver out of whatever the problem was. 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:52.960 Erasmus Darwin, who was the grandfather of the famous Charles Darwin, 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:57.480 was one of the physicians who experimented with medical uses 0:16:57.560 --> 0:17:01.520 of electricity. The medical community was not universal in its 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:04.800 acceptance of electricity as a means of treatment, but Darwin 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:07.960 and a few other physicians sought to employ electricity to 0:17:08.040 --> 0:17:12.399 treat certain ailments and conditions, again mostly in places where 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:19.320 other treatments just weren't working. These included neurological disorders and diseases, paralysis, seizures, 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:23.560 things like that. And his fellow philosophers felt that natural philosophy, 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:27.120 which was their term for the natural sciences, primarily physics, 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:30.280 had the potential to make life better for people in general, 0:17:30.560 --> 0:17:33.160 and using electricity to help some of the most vulnerable 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:35.679 people in the population seemed like a great way to 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:39.840 do that now, Darwin believed in a concept called the 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:43.400 spirit of animation. This would be a type of energy 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:48.159 within living beings that gave life to those beings. This 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:52.640 energy would travel along nerves to muscles, and in some 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:56.760 ways it was similar to electricity itself, and it was 0:17:56.880 --> 0:18:00.199 kind of heading down the right path towards how our 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:04.840 neurological systems use electrochemical signals to control our muscles. But 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:09.359 it was a much more primitive and somewhat spiritual outlook 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:12.840 on that process. Now that being said, Darwin and his 0:18:12.880 --> 0:18:17.959 contemporaries had a limited understanding of electricity. Darwin described it 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:23.040 as an ethereal fluid. Likewise, the understanding of actual ailments 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:27.600 was limited and the language describing them sometimes imprecise. So 0:18:27.800 --> 0:18:31.639 Darwin used electricity to treat everything from jaundice to tape worms. 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:35.440 He also used it to treat symptoms like pain and swelling, 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:39.040 and he noted that the shocks could restore some movement 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:41.960 to what appeared to be lifeless limbs, something that a 0:18:42.000 --> 0:18:45.639 couple of other physicians would expand upon later. And early 0:18:45.680 --> 0:18:50.919 electrician named Tiberius Cavallo from Italy immigrated to England and 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:53.440 became a member of the Royal Society. He worked to 0:18:53.680 --> 0:18:57.480 improve electrical devices, and he also lamented that many of 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:00.880 the people in England making use of electricity medicine were 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:05.400 under qualified to do it properly. He said natural philosophers 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:09.560 frequently lacked sufficient education and training in medicine whereat while 0:19:09.760 --> 0:19:14.160 the physicians the doctors fell short in the natural philosophy department. 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:18.000 And indeed, as word spread, many people began incorporating stuff 0:19:18.040 --> 0:19:21.880 like Leyden jars in their various treatments. Some like Darwin, 0:19:22.000 --> 0:19:24.480 were attempting to approach things from a more or less 0:19:24.600 --> 0:19:29.320 scientific perspective. Others were more on the snake oil con 0:19:29.480 --> 0:19:32.919 man side of things, and because of some advances in 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:37.080 science technology, things were about to get more complicated. But 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:40.160 before I get into that, I want to tell you 0:19:40.520 --> 0:19:45.040 about today's sponsor, LinkedIn. Now, I'm sure you've all heard 0:19:45.200 --> 0:19:48.280 of LinkedIn. 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More than that, 0:20:15.560 --> 0:20:19.560 LinkedIn gives employers the chance to discover candidates who display 0:20:19.600 --> 0:20:24.520 the qualities the business needs most, whether it's collaboration, creativity, flexibility, 0:20:24.600 --> 0:20:28.320 or some combination of the above and more. LinkedIn gets 0:20:28.320 --> 0:20:31.560 your job post to the candidates best suited for your needs, 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:34.280 giving you the best choices while taking up the least 0:20:34.280 --> 0:20:37.639 amount of time. It's no wonder great candidates are hired 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:41.760 every eight seconds on LinkedIn. Find the right person meant 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:45.120 for your business today. With linked in jobs, you can 0:20:45.160 --> 0:20:48.239 pay what you want and the first fifty dollars is 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:52.440 on them. Just visit linked in dot com slash tech 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:57.520 pod Again, that's LinkedIn dot com slash tech pod T 0:20:57.720 --> 0:21:00.720 E C, H, P O D to getty dollars off 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:05.320 your first job post. Terms and conditions apply. Now let's 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:09.200 get back to electricity as a type of medical therapy. 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:12.760 Up until this point, I've been talking about using electrostatic 0:21:12.920 --> 0:21:17.280 charges to target specific body parts or general regions of 0:21:17.320 --> 0:21:20.840 the body. That means every treatment would be administered as 0:21:20.880 --> 0:21:24.480 a single or a series of single shocks, so you'd 0:21:24.480 --> 0:21:27.160 get shocked, and maybe they'd have to use a couple 0:21:27.160 --> 0:21:30.160 of different electro stag generators to continue to build up 0:21:30.200 --> 0:21:34.160 a charge to shock you. Again, these were not necessarily 0:21:34.359 --> 0:21:38.399 super powerful shocks, though sometimes they could be, and with 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:41.600 electro static charges, you're talking about discharging it pretty much 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:45.240 all at once, at least until Alessandro Volta invented the 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:48.800 electro forests. But never mind that it gets a little 0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:51.520 too deep in the weeds for us. Then we get 0:21:51.600 --> 0:21:57.000 to Luigi Galvani, an Italian physician in the late seventeen hundreds. 0:21:57.080 --> 0:22:01.320 On November six, eighty, galva he began to experiment with 0:22:01.440 --> 0:22:07.480 fresh frog legs, freshly cut from the frog. Galvanni hypothesized 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:10.360 that the muscle, tissue and the nerves in a frog's 0:22:10.440 --> 0:22:13.919 legs could generate electricity, and that this was the energy 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:18.040 used for motive force. This was different from the prevailing 0:22:18.080 --> 0:22:21.600 wisdom at the time, and he was largely derided for 0:22:21.680 --> 0:22:25.600 this hypothesis. In one of his experiments, he connected a 0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:29.720 nerve from a frog leg to a Franklin square capacitor, 0:22:30.119 --> 0:22:33.600 which caused the leg to twitch. He later used an 0:22:33.720 --> 0:22:38.240 arc of metallic wire to connect a nerve to a 0:22:38.520 --> 0:22:41.520 muscle in the frog leg, and that also caused the 0:22:41.640 --> 0:22:45.920 leg to contract again. Galvani published his results a decade 0:22:46.000 --> 0:22:52.879 later in sev Alessandro Volta recreated Galvani's experiments and discovered 0:22:52.920 --> 0:22:55.280 that he got even better results if he used a 0:22:55.280 --> 0:23:00.560 metallic arc made of two different metals, so bi metallic wire. 0:23:01.160 --> 0:23:03.840 Volta believed that the two different types of metal were 0:23:03.880 --> 0:23:07.320 necessary to create what he thought of as an electrical imbalance, 0:23:08.000 --> 0:23:12.200 so a differential, if you will, and that Galvani's hypothesis 0:23:12.280 --> 0:23:15.679 that the animal's tissue generated its own electricity was off base. 0:23:16.080 --> 0:23:19.440 Galvanni responded with a new experiment in which he connected 0:23:19.480 --> 0:23:22.880 the nerves of two different frog legs together and that 0:23:22.920 --> 0:23:27.160 caused both frog legs to twitch. Galvani and Volta engaged 0:23:27.200 --> 0:23:31.639 in a spirited debate through correspondence and publications. That debate 0:23:31.760 --> 0:23:36.000 ended in se not because one side had thoroughly defeated 0:23:36.040 --> 0:23:39.000 the other, but because Galvanni went the way of his 0:23:39.080 --> 0:23:44.560 frogs and croaked get it. Volta took his idea and 0:23:44.600 --> 0:23:47.439 he created a device that we call the voltaic pile. 0:23:48.280 --> 0:23:51.760 It was a stack of alternating layers of copper and 0:23:51.960 --> 0:23:55.920 cardboard soaked in salt water and zinc, and you had 0:23:55.920 --> 0:23:58.720 a wire connecting the bottom plate of the pile to 0:23:58.880 --> 0:24:01.720 the top plate, and that made a circuit through which 0:24:01.720 --> 0:24:05.080 electricity could flow. So you could actually put a load 0:24:05.240 --> 0:24:07.560 on that wire and it would power it. Not that 0:24:07.600 --> 0:24:10.920 there was anything to really power at that point. Sure enough, 0:24:10.920 --> 0:24:14.119 the pile generated a steady current of electricity, so it 0:24:14.200 --> 0:24:16.800 was an early type of battery. Now I'm not going 0:24:16.840 --> 0:24:19.000 to go into the full chemistry of what's going on 0:24:19.119 --> 0:24:22.000 here because it would require a pretty big tangent in 0:24:22.040 --> 0:24:25.400 this episode, but we'll save that for a future episode. Well, 0:24:25.440 --> 0:24:28.840 we'll go into more detail. And as for the debate 0:24:28.880 --> 0:24:31.960 between Galvani and Volta, turns out both guys were right. 0:24:32.359 --> 0:24:35.199 Volta was correct that the two medals connected through a 0:24:35.240 --> 0:24:39.560 salty medium generated electricity. It proved to be true, and 0:24:39.640 --> 0:24:43.679 Galvanni's hypothesis that nerves and muscles generate electricity also proved 0:24:43.680 --> 0:24:47.399 to be true. So everybody wins. The invention of the 0:24:47.400 --> 0:24:50.720 battery would lead to new applications of electricity in medicine, 0:24:50.840 --> 0:24:54.800 and slowly physicians were starting to change their understanding of 0:24:54.840 --> 0:24:58.560 how the body works. In the seventeen forties and seventeen fifties, 0:24:58.720 --> 0:25:04.120 the prevailing ideas felt into a category called iatro mechanical theories. 0:25:04.160 --> 0:25:06.080 And I'm sure I messed that up too, but the 0:25:06.160 --> 0:25:10.040 underlying assumption for that theory was that most illnesses were 0:25:10.080 --> 0:25:15.320 caused because something somewhere in the body was all gunked up. Essentially, 0:25:15.720 --> 0:25:20.600 either the blood wasn't flowing properly, or nerves were somehow constricted, 0:25:21.280 --> 0:25:24.720 or your gushy fluids in your body had become sludgy 0:25:24.880 --> 0:25:29.160 like jello, and we'll see there's your problem. Well, many 0:25:29.200 --> 0:25:32.680 people at the time believe that electricity could get stuff 0:25:32.880 --> 0:25:36.600 moving again, that it could quicken the pulse, and perhaps 0:25:36.640 --> 0:25:38.920