Speaker 1: Welcome to text Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and I love all things tech and
Speaker 1: I was recently listening to an episode of a different podcast,
Speaker 1: the podcast Sawbones, in which wife and husband team Sydney
Speaker 1: and Justin McElroy discussed some of the ways we humans
Speaker 1: have tried to treat medical issues using a limited understanding
Speaker 1: of those issues and the various treatments we were applying.
Speaker 1: So they've done tons of episodes on stuff like blood
Speaker 1: letting or trepid nation, and recently they did one on
Speaker 1: the use of electricity as a means of treating medical issues,
Speaker 1: and they do a great job, but I thought I
Speaker 1: would dive into it a little bit more and talk
Speaker 1: about how we built an understanding around electricity and then
Speaker 1: how we made use of electricity to try and treat ourselves,
Speaker 1: sometimes not so well. And I'm looking really at the
Speaker 1: early uses. I'll talk a little bit about modern uses
Speaker 1: of electricity, but I'm mostly focusing on how we first
Speaker 1: started applying electricity to medical uses. And I want to
Speaker 1: keep in mind that we do still have electrotherapy today,
Speaker 1: though it's still a matter of some mystery and confusion,
Speaker 1: also largely because some people appropriate the term electrotherapy to
Speaker 1: pedal medically questionable products and services. So you've got more
Speaker 1: reputable sources that are attempting to determine whether or not
Speaker 1: electrotherapy is a working means of treatment, and you have
Speaker 1: other people who don't really concern themselves with that part.
Speaker 1: They're just looking to sell stuff. And electricity is almost
Speaker 1: like magic to a lot of us. And also in
Speaker 1: this episode, I'll be focusing primarily on direct application of electricity.
Speaker 1: It's pretty obvious that many medical procedures either depend directly
Speaker 1: or indirectly on electricity and electrical instruments and equipment, and
Speaker 1: I'm not getting down all those pathways, though we should
Speaker 1: understand their. Use of electricity in the medical field began
Speaker 1: to emerge around the same time as our understanding of
Speaker 1: other phenomena such as X rays and ultra violet rays,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of histories about electricity and medicine
Speaker 1: also talk about these, And sure we could talk about
Speaker 1: lots of different types of equipment, scanners, things like that,
Speaker 1: instruments but I really want to talk about directly applying
Speaker 1: electricity to the human body. Back to Sawbones, which I
Speaker 1: should add is is not affiliated with the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio network at all. Just in the interest of full disclosure,
Speaker 1: I am a fan of Sawbones. I also have no
Speaker 1: connection with the macl roys tho. Hey guys, Sydney, Justin Griffin,
Speaker 1: Travis if you if you want to chat, hit me up.
Speaker 1: But the Sawbones episode was inspired by Benjamin Franklin, who
Speaker 1: conducted famous experiments with electricity. If you are familiar with
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin as a historical figure, you've probably heard about
Speaker 1: his experiment with the kite and the key during the thunderstorm.
Speaker 1: So some of this episode will play into that a
Speaker 1: little bit. But our knowledge of electricity actually dates much
Speaker 1: further back than that founding father of the United States.
Speaker 1: You could even really say that humans were at least
Speaker 1: aware of electricity in some measure, just from the presence
Speaker 1: of lightning. Now, we didn't understand what it was, we
Speaker 1: didn't have a name for it like electricity, and we
Speaker 1: didn't know how it was formed, but we knew it existed.
Speaker 1: We could see that, but it would take a long
Speaker 1: time to figure out what those bolts actually were. In fact,
Speaker 1: during Benjamin Franklin's time, the thought was it was some
Speaker 1: form of fluid. In fact, that's why we get the
Speaker 1: word current, because of a flow of some sort of
Speaker 1: electrical ether fluid stuff. Now, the earliest account that describes
Speaker 1: one aspect of electricity, one that is going to be
Speaker 1: very important for this discussion, comes from sales of Milita's
Speaker 1: And I know I've butchered that name. My Greek is
Speaker 1: worse than my Latin, which is terrible. But he was
Speaker 1: a Greek philosopher. Aristotle actually thought of him as the
Speaker 1: first true philosopher, who was born in six hundred twenty
Speaker 1: four b c e. And he asked a lot of questions,
Speaker 1: which is what philosophers do. And these are questions that
Speaker 1: had before his time largely been met with the answer
Speaker 1: because the gods want it to be that way, you know,
Speaker 1: like like lightning was Zeus's way of saying, hey, knock
Speaker 1: that crap off. But this philosopher was more inclined to
Speaker 1: believe that there were less mythological explanations for certain phenomena
Speaker 1: there might be more natural and one could argue in
Speaker 1: the future scientific explanations for those things, and one thing
Speaker 1: he observed had to do with what we now know
Speaker 1: as static electricity. He wrote something that likely people had
Speaker 1: already been observing for quite some time, which was if
Speaker 1: you rubbed amber was something like animal fur. If you
Speaker 1: did it vigorously enough, the fur would then start to
Speaker 1: attract other stuff like moats of dust to it. Particles
Speaker 1: would drift toward the fur. It was drawing stuff to it.
Speaker 1: Stuff like blades of dried grass would move toward it,
Speaker 1: and there was some sort of power of attraction going
Speaker 1: on that people just couldn't easily explain. But I can
Speaker 1: do it now. To be fair, very smart people figured
Speaker 1: all this stuff out way way before I was ever born,
Speaker 1: and I just benefit from having been able to read
Speaker 1: about it. But it comes down to some basic features
Speaker 1: in atoms. So yeah, this is gonna get super super basic,
Speaker 1: and then we'll build up from there. You know, typical
Speaker 1: text stuff approach. Atoms have neutrons, protons and electrons. Protons
Speaker 1: have a positive charge, electrons have a negative charge, and
Speaker 1: neutrons just want to get through the day without too
Speaker 1: much hassle. Opposite charges attract each other, so a negative
Speaker 1: charge attracts a positive charge Likewise, like charges repel each other.
Speaker 1: So if you get to positively charged particles together, well,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be spending a lot of energy because those
Speaker 1: positive charges are gonna push back against each other. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are forces within the nucleus of an atom that
Speaker 1: bind protons together, which is why they don't just fly
Speaker 1: apart from the fact that their charges are repelling each other.
Speaker 1: With the amber and animal, for what's really going on
Speaker 1: is a transfer of electrons from one material to the
Speaker 1: surface of another material. The animal for collects electrons from
Speaker 1: the amber and thus builds up a negative charge. This
Speaker 1: charge is nowhere to go. It's static. There's no current
Speaker 1: to flow through, there's no circuit there for it to
Speaker 1: create a current. So if the negatively charged material makes
Speaker 1: contact with something else, it can then release that electric charge.
Speaker 1: It can discharge, and that's when you get that little
Speaker 1: snappy spark. It's also what happens if you rub your
Speaker 1: feet against the carpet and then touch someone else or
Speaker 1: something metal and you get that little shock. It's because
Speaker 1: you've got this build up of electrons that you then
Speaker 1: discharge when you come in contact with something that doesn't
Speaker 1: have that build up. So the animal fur with a
Speaker 1: negative charge will attract stuff that has a greater positive
Speaker 1: charge than the fur does. So those dust moats have
Speaker 1: a slight positive charge to them, they're being attracted to
Speaker 1: that negative charge. On a related note, if you've ever
Speaker 1: seen a person's hair stand on end after taking off
Speaker 1: a hat, or if they're playing with an electrostatic generator,
Speaker 1: that because the hairs get negatively charged, and because like
Speaker 1: charges repel each other, the hairs are actually repelling one another.
Speaker 1: They stand on end because they're attempting to get as
Speaker 1: far away from each other as they possibly can. Uh,
Speaker 1: or so I'm told, I don't know. I've been bald
Speaker 1: for twenty years. I have no idea what hair even
Speaker 1: does anymore. It never comes to visit doesn't even call
Speaker 1: me anyway. While philosophers like the one I was just
Speaker 1: mentioning observed phenomena like these, they had no way to
Speaker 1: explain what was actually going on, and it remained a
Speaker 1: mystery for centuries, and no one yet had had been
Speaker 1: able to link this curious observation with more dramatic examples
Speaker 1: like lightning. There was no way of saying these two
Speaker 1: things are related. If we want to talk about therapy, well,
Speaker 1: there are actually some stories about ancient people using electrotherapy,
Speaker 1: uh Pacrates or Hippocrates. If you prefer treated patients by
Speaker 1: placing them in barrels filled with water and electric eels,
Speaker 1: it's pretty primitive electrotherapy. He did that to treat stuff
Speaker 1: like gout and rheumatism. I'm not sure to what effect,
Speaker 1: because I ran out of time before I could really
Speaker 1: dig up more accounts of that particular therapy. Now we
Speaker 1: probably get the word electricity thanks mainly to a fellow
Speaker 1: named William Gilbert. He was born in fifteen forty four
Speaker 1: in England, and he became an astronomer and a physician.
Speaker 1: He actually served Elizabeth the First at one point as
Speaker 1: a court physician. He also wrote a work titled d Magnete,
Speaker 1: which he published around six hundred. This work was filled
Speaker 1: with his observations on matters surrounding magnetism and electrical phenomena.
Speaker 1: He differentiated between magnets and the attractive effect observed when
Speaker 1: using amber, sometimes helpfully called the amber effect. Gilbert said
Speaker 1: these two things were similar but distinct phenomena that magnets
Speaker 1: and this attractive force he was observing through electrostatic build
Speaker 1: up were related somehow or similar in many ways, but
Speaker 1: they were not exactly the same thing. Later scientists would
Speaker 1: determine that they are both manifestations of a single force,
Speaker 1: that of electro magnetism, but they are distinct. So that
Speaker 1: would be getting ahead of ourselves. Let's get back to Gilbert.
Speaker 1: He referred to the materials that were known for this
Speaker 1: static electricity effect as electricus. That is a new Latin word,
Speaker 1: meaning it wasn't an existing Latin phrase. He actually took
Speaker 1: a Greek word and then he sort of latinized it
Speaker 1: and he meant it to mean like amber. So electricus
Speaker 1: is like amber. The Greek word was electron, which meant
Speaker 1: amber itself. So he took a Greek word, made it
Speaker 1: sort of Latin and then got electricus. He described the
Speaker 1: attractive force as an electric force. Another smarty pants named
Speaker 1: Francis Bacon used the word electric to describe materials that
Speaker 1: could create this attractive force, and in sixteen forty six,
Speaker 1: Sir Thomas Brown went a step further and he coined
Speaker 1: the word electricity. Now, in this case, it was a
Speaker 1: word meant to describe a material's behavior or the property
Speaker 1: of being electric, sort of like if you were elastic
Speaker 1: you would describe the quality of elastic as elasticity. Well,
Speaker 1: that was the case with electricity. It didn't mean a
Speaker 1: current or a flow or anything. It was a way
Speaker 1: of describing the tendency for material to be electric. Moving
Speaker 1: forward a century, two different people independently invented a device
Speaker 1: capable of storing static electricity. One of those was evolved
Speaker 1: joe Orge von Kleist, and together was Peter von muschen
Speaker 1: Brook And again i'm butchering names. Both of these guys
Speaker 1: developed their version in the early seventeen forties, and the
Speaker 1: basic device was pretty simple in its original form. It
Speaker 1: was a glass vial that had some water in it,
Speaker 1: and the vial had a cork that capped the vial.
Speaker 1: But piercing through the cork was a piece of metallic
Speaker 1: wire that was long enough to have one end of
Speaker 1: it dipping into the water in the vial. The other
Speaker 1: end would extend out from the end of the cork
Speaker 1: and it would be brought into contact with what was
Speaker 1: called a friction device, essentially electrostatic generator. This was the
Speaker 1: device meant to build up a static charge, and this
Speaker 1: would transfer a build up of electrons to the wire,
Speaker 1: which they could then actually hold on to that that charge,
Speaker 1: and it would hold onto it until you touched it
Speaker 1: to something that would allow it to complete a circuit,
Speaker 1: and then it would discharge that electricity in a spark.
Speaker 1: So it was sort of like a very primitive capacitor. UH.
Speaker 1: This would end up being called a Leyden jar because
Speaker 1: the area that it was that where it was being
Speaker 1: invented was near Leyden in the Netherlands. UH and later
Speaker 1: versions of it would end up using metallic components, not
Speaker 1: just a glass vial filled with water, but the earliest
Speaker 1: versions were basically just that. Now this brings us to
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin. Franklin met with a doctor named Dr Spence,
Speaker 1: apparently who had traveled from Scotland. According to Franklin, there's
Speaker 1: actually some scholastic debate over who Dr Spence might have been.
Speaker 1: Maybe he was Spencer, not Spence. Franklin got to see
Speaker 1: a Leyden jar in action and he was fascinated by it,
Speaker 1: and not long afterward, Peter Collinson of the Royal Society
Speaker 1: of London sent Benjamin Franklin the equipment that he needed
Speaker 1: to make his own Leaden jar, and Franklin began doing
Speaker 1: experiments and sussing out the nature of this electricity thing. Now,
Speaker 1: some of those experiments involved using electricity to treat people
Speaker 1: with paralysis or people who were dealing with symptoms that
Speaker 1: they developed in the aftermath of a stroke. He observed
Speaker 1: that some patients reported improvement and relief after receiving electro
Speaker 1: static shocks, but he wrote in seventeen fifty seven to
Speaker 1: the Royal Society that he quote never knew any advantages
Speaker 1: from electricity in patients that were permanent end quote. So
Speaker 1: in other words, the effects he observed appeared to be
Speaker 1: temporary in nature. They did not seem to be a cure,
Speaker 1: although they might treat acute symptoms, and he couldn't really
Speaker 1: explain what was going on. Also, I should add that
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin wasn't necessarily just doing this on his own, thinking, well, gosh,
Speaker 1: I wonder what happens if I shock people who aren't
Speaker 1: feeling well? Will they feel better? This was sort of
Speaker 1: an accut humulative approach. There were a lot of people
Speaker 1: who were speculating that electricity might be used for things
Speaker 1: that they had frankly run out of ideas as far
Speaker 1: as how they could treat them. There were a lot
Speaker 1: of diseases and disorders that we just didn't know how
Speaker 1: to treat. None of the conventional approaches seemed to work,
Speaker 1: so it was almost a move of desperation. Now, Franklin
Speaker 1: also went on to prove that lightning and the sparks
Speaker 1: that he was seeing from these electro static discharges were
Speaker 1: in fact the same thing. Different orders of magnitude and strength,
Speaker 1: but they were the same thing. He also invented the
Speaker 1: lightning rod to help protect houses against lightning strikes. Now,
Speaker 1: speaking of the Royal Society, its members were also experimenting
Speaker 1: with using electricity as a medical treatment for all sorts
Speaker 1: of ailments, though primarily for things like paralysis, seizures, and
Speaker 1: neurological disorders and diseases in general. The physicians of the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century who were inclined to try electricity as a
Speaker 1: means of treating these issues did so because more conventional
Speaker 1: treatments were failing. This isn't quite like saying, well nothing
Speaker 1: else worked, let's shock them. But it's not far from
Speaker 1: that point of view, And we're still talking about discharging
Speaker 1: and electrostatic charge, so zapping someone not subjecting someone to
Speaker 1: a prolonged, uninterrupted current of electricity, so this was usually
Speaker 1: done with the zapp going to whatever area of the
Speaker 1: body was thought to be affected. So, depending upon the
Speaker 1: disease or the disorder, the doctors would say, well, let's
Speaker 1: target let's say the liver, and they would deliver an
Speaker 1: electric shocked toward the the person's abdomen in an effort
Speaker 1: to shock the liver out of whatever the problem was.
Speaker 1: Erasmus Darwin, who was the grandfather of the famous Charles Darwin,
Speaker 1: was one of the physicians who experimented with medical uses
Speaker 1: of electricity. The medical community was not universal in its
Speaker 1: acceptance of electricity as a means of treatment, but Darwin
Speaker 1: and a few other physicians sought to employ electricity to
Speaker 1: treat certain ailments and conditions, again mostly in places where
Speaker 1: other treatments just weren't working. These included neurological disorders and diseases, paralysis, seizures,
Speaker 1: things like that. And his fellow philosophers felt that natural philosophy,
Speaker 1: which was their term for the natural sciences, primarily physics,
Speaker 1: had the potential to make life better for people in general,
Speaker 1: and using electricity to help some of the most vulnerable
Speaker 1: people in the population seemed like a great way to
Speaker 1: do that now, Darwin believed in a concept called the
Speaker 1: spirit of animation. This would be a type of energy
Speaker 1: within living beings that gave life to those beings. This
Speaker 1: energy would travel along nerves to muscles, and in some
Speaker 1: ways it was similar to electricity itself, and it was
Speaker 1: kind of heading down the right path towards how our
Speaker 1: neurological systems use electrochemical signals to control our muscles. But
Speaker 1: it was a much more primitive and somewhat spiritual outlook
Speaker 1: on that process. Now that being said, Darwin and his
Speaker 1: contemporaries had a limited understanding of electricity. Darwin described it
Speaker 1: as an ethereal fluid. Likewise, the understanding of actual ailments
Speaker 1: was limited and the language describing them sometimes imprecise. So
Speaker 1: Darwin used electricity to treat everything from jaundice to tape worms.
Speaker 1: He also used it to treat symptoms like pain and swelling,
Speaker 1: and he noted that the shocks could restore some movement
Speaker 1: to what appeared to be lifeless limbs, something that a
Speaker 1: couple of other physicians would expand upon later. And early
Speaker 1: electrician named Tiberius Cavallo from Italy immigrated to England and
Speaker 1: became a member of the Royal Society. He worked to
Speaker 1: improve electrical devices, and he also lamented that many of
Speaker 1: the people in England making use of electricity medicine were
Speaker 1: under qualified to do it properly. He said natural philosophers
Speaker 1: frequently lacked sufficient education and training in medicine whereat while
Speaker 1: the physicians the doctors fell short in the natural philosophy department.
Speaker 1: And indeed, as word spread, many people began incorporating stuff
Speaker 1: like Leyden jars in their various treatments. Some like Darwin,
Speaker 1: were attempting to approach things from a more or less
Speaker 1: scientific perspective. Others were more on the snake oil con
Speaker 1: man side of things, and because of some advances in
Speaker 1: science technology, things were about to get more complicated. But
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Speaker 1: get back to electricity as a type of medical therapy.
Speaker 1: Up until this point, I've been talking about using electrostatic
Speaker 1: charges to target specific body parts or general regions of
Speaker 1: the body. That means every treatment would be administered as
Speaker 1: a single or a series of single shocks, so you'd
Speaker 1: get shocked, and maybe they'd have to use a couple
Speaker 1: of different electro stag generators to continue to build up
Speaker 1: a charge to shock you. Again, these were not necessarily
Speaker 1: super powerful shocks, though sometimes they could be, and with
Speaker 1: electro static charges, you're talking about discharging it pretty much
Speaker 1: all at once, at least until Alessandro Volta invented the
Speaker 1: electro forests. But never mind that it gets a little
Speaker 1: too deep in the weeds for us. Then we get
Speaker 1: to Luigi Galvani, an Italian physician in the late seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 1: On November six, eighty, galva he began to experiment with
Speaker 1: fresh frog legs, freshly cut from the frog. Galvanni hypothesized
Speaker 1: that the muscle, tissue and the nerves in a frog's
Speaker 1: legs could generate electricity, and that this was the energy
Speaker 1: used for motive force. This was different from the prevailing
Speaker 1: wisdom at the time, and he was largely derided for
Speaker 1: this hypothesis. In one of his experiments, he connected a
Speaker 1: nerve from a frog leg to a Franklin square capacitor,
Speaker 1: which caused the leg to twitch. He later used an
Speaker 1: arc of metallic wire to connect a nerve to a
Speaker 1: muscle in the frog leg, and that also caused the
Speaker 1: leg to contract again. Galvani published his results a decade
Speaker 1: later in sev Alessandro Volta recreated Galvani's experiments and discovered
Speaker 1: that he got even better results if he used a
Speaker 1: metallic arc made of two different metals, so bi metallic wire.
Speaker 1: Volta believed that the two different types of metal were
Speaker 1: necessary to create what he thought of as an electrical imbalance,
Speaker 1: so a differential, if you will, and that Galvani's hypothesis
Speaker 1: that the animal's tissue generated its own electricity was off base.
Speaker 1: Galvanni responded with a new experiment in which he connected
Speaker 1: the nerves of two different frog legs together and that
Speaker 1: caused both frog legs to twitch. Galvani and Volta engaged
Speaker 1: in a spirited debate through correspondence and publications. That debate
Speaker 1: ended in se not because one side had thoroughly defeated
Speaker 1: the other, but because Galvanni went the way of his
Speaker 1: frogs and croaked get it. Volta took his idea and
Speaker 1: he created a device that we call the voltaic pile.
Speaker 1: It was a stack of alternating layers of copper and
Speaker 1: cardboard soaked in salt water and zinc, and you had
Speaker 1: a wire connecting the bottom plate of the pile to
Speaker 1: the top plate, and that made a circuit through which
Speaker 1: electricity could flow. So you could actually put a load
Speaker 1: on that wire and it would power it. Not that
Speaker 1: there was anything to really power at that point. Sure enough,
Speaker 1: the pile generated a steady current of electricity, so it
Speaker 1: was an early type of battery. Now I'm not going
Speaker 1: to go into the full chemistry of what's going on
Speaker 1: here because it would require a pretty big tangent in
Speaker 1: this episode, but we'll save that for a future episode. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll go into more detail. And as for the debate
Speaker 1: between Galvani and Volta, turns out both guys were right.
Speaker 1: Volta was correct that the two medals connected through a
Speaker 1: salty medium generated electricity. It proved to be true, and
Speaker 1: Galvanni's hypothesis that nerves and muscles generate electricity also proved
Speaker 1: to be true. So everybody wins. The invention of the
Speaker 1: battery would lead to new applications of electricity in medicine,
Speaker 1: and slowly physicians were starting to change their understanding of
Speaker 1: how the body works. In the seventeen forties and seventeen fifties,
Speaker 1: the prevailing ideas felt into a category called iatro mechanical theories.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure I messed that up too, but the
Speaker 1: underlying assumption for that theory was that most illnesses were
Speaker 1: caused because something somewhere in the body was all gunked up. Essentially,
Speaker 1: either the blood wasn't flowing properly, or nerves were somehow constricted,
Speaker 1: or your gushy fluids in your body had become sludgy
Speaker 1: like jello, and we'll see there's your problem. Well, many
Speaker 1: people at the time believe that electricity could get stuff
Speaker 1: moving again, that it could quicken the pulse, and perhaps
Speaker 1: it could even break up that sludgy stuff in your
Speaker 1: body to make you better. That electricity could dislodge blocked
Speaker 1: humors in your body, and that those humors would otherwise
Speaker 1: prevent your body from being able to get rid of them.
Speaker 1: You know, you would just sweat them out or excrete
Speaker 1: them in some way you would get rid of noxious humors.
Speaker 1: And this seems awfully similar to something that gets pedaled
Speaker 1: a lot today, which is namely the concept of toxins.
Speaker 1: You'll hear a lot about various treatments from massage you know,
Speaker 1: a massage therapist, to to sweat lodges, to all sorts
Speaker 1: of different things where you get this vague concept of
Speaker 1: removing toxins from your body, like knocking loose toxins. That's
Speaker 1: an old, old, old idea that has no basis in
Speaker 1: real science. Uh, your liver actually does process toxins already,
Speaker 1: So assuming you have a working liver, then your liver
Speaker 1: is already doing that for you. That's its job. If
Speaker 1: you don't have a working liver, you've got bigger problems
Speaker 1: to worry about. But this bit of medical misunderstanding has
Speaker 1: been incredibly persistent and remains a key component in a
Speaker 1: lot of different places, saying like this is what our
Speaker 1: treatments do for you. By the way, I'm not knocking massages.
Speaker 1: I love them, but yeah, the whole toxin thing is
Speaker 1: kind of um. Let's just say hello blue over nothing.
Speaker 1: On a related note, magnetism was also an area of
Speaker 1: intense interest among physicians and the general public, and because
Speaker 1: it's related to electricity through the electro magnetism force, I
Speaker 1: thought i'd chat about just for a second, like electricity.
Speaker 1: There are legitimate uses of magnets in the medical industry.
Speaker 1: There are many of them, magnetic resonance imaging, for example. However,
Speaker 1: magnets also gave rise to the opportunity for Charlatan's to
Speaker 1: ascribe magical or vague properties to them that would somehow
Speaker 1: be a benefit to humans. Sure, they couldn't really explain
Speaker 1: how the magnets did this, but the claims were there.
Speaker 1: The fact that magnets could attract and repel each other
Speaker 1: through some invisible force made it seem kind of mystical
Speaker 1: to people, and I think this is why to this
Speaker 1: day you can find companies that market magnetic bracelets that
Speaker 1: supposedly do everything from improving your circulation to somehow giving
Speaker 1: you a boost in athletic performance. There's no real scientific
Speaker 1: evidence to bear any of that out. By the way,
Speaker 1: the premise depends upon the target customer taking a leap
Speaker 1: of faith. It's actually pretty hard to understand how magnets work.
Speaker 1: I mean, just ask the insane clown Posse. And sometimes
Speaker 1: we humans are willing to take another leap if we
Speaker 1: see something that we can tell does something, but we
Speaker 1: don't understand how it does. That something. So if I
Speaker 1: see a device do something that is really incredible, and
Speaker 1: then you tell me it can do something even more incredible,
Speaker 1: I might be inclined to believe you. I've already witnessed
Speaker 1: it do something that I can't explain, so I might
Speaker 1: be willing to just go along for the ride for
Speaker 1: the whole thing. And a lot of people found that
Speaker 1: out with magnets. So ignorance is the friend of the
Speaker 1: con man, is what I'm saying there, and it would
Speaker 1: be true both for magnets and electricity. However, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be a little bit more charitable. Not everyone in
Speaker 1: the eighteenth and nineteen centuries was out to pull a
Speaker 1: fast one on people. I guess it's important to acknowledge
Speaker 1: physicians around this time were largely in an experimental phase.
Speaker 1: They were very slowly learning which treatments were most effective
Speaker 1: for various ailments. We weren't quite in the era of
Speaker 1: modern medicine yet, nor did we have a basic understanding
Speaker 1: of most pathogens. So it shouldn't be a huge surprise
Speaker 1: that some physicians were willing to try all new approaches,
Speaker 1: including the use of something they didn't fully understand, in
Speaker 1: the hopes that perhaps some positive effect would follow. Many
Speaker 1: of their patients had tried all other available treatments, and
Speaker 1: so any port in a storm. I guess with the
Speaker 1: invention of the voltaic pile, we were on our way
Speaker 1: to the creation of batteries, and these would provide a
Speaker 1: supply of direct current, typically at pretty low voltages. And
Speaker 1: the early experiments in using electricity to treat a host
Speaker 1: of ailments meant that you could have a lot of
Speaker 1: opportunity to jump on the chance to create products that
Speaker 1: leverage the legitimacy given to the practice by the pioneers
Speaker 1: and medicine. So in other words, you had legitim it
Speaker 1: respectable people looking into ways of using electricity to actually
Speaker 1: try and treat people. Then you had all the people
Speaker 1: who said, hey, I think this is a way I
Speaker 1: can make a buck, and I can trade upon the
Speaker 1: legitimacy made by these other people who are also just experimenting.
Speaker 1: So this was also the era of patent medicines, also
Speaker 1: known as nostrums. These were products marketed as cures for
Speaker 1: various illnesses that were sold as over the counter treatments
Speaker 1: and there was no need for a prescription and there
Speaker 1: was no accountability either. In many cases. Perhaps in most cases,
Speaker 1: the best you could hope for is that you would
Speaker 1: end up with something that was ineffective but didn't cause
Speaker 1: any further harm. In the worst cases, you would end
Speaker 1: up with quote unquote cures that could be toxic all
Speaker 1: on their own. If you've seen the original version of
Speaker 1: the Disney film Pete's Dragon, there's an antagonist named Doctor Terminus.
Speaker 1: He's a con man who deals in patent medicines. Well,
Speaker 1: electricity would join the banks of those supposed cures in
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds. So let's take the work of Dr
Speaker 1: James Bryan for example. I do not know much about
Speaker 1: this person. My initial research didn't turn up any real
Speaker 1: facts other than there are a lot of doctors who
Speaker 1: happened to have the name James Bryan, both in the
Speaker 1: past and in present day. But this doctor James Bryan
Speaker 1: produced a pamphlet advertising his products and services, which included
Speaker 1: electric belts and electric baths. So what the what? We'll
Speaker 1: explain more in a second, but first let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break. Before the break, I alluded to the electric
Speaker 1: belts and baths of doctor James Bryan, So what the
Speaker 1: heck were those? Well, an electric belt is kind of
Speaker 1: what it sounds like. It was a belt worn against
Speaker 1: the skin, and the belt had electrodes in it through
Speaker 1: which it could administer a current into the body of
Speaker 1: the person wearing the belt and be attached to a
Speaker 1: battery or voltaic pile. The pamphlet helpfully has illustrations showing
Speaker 1: how different belts could be worn around the waist, around
Speaker 1: the stomach, as well as a harness version that would
Speaker 1: include electrodes near the back or the chest. And according
Speaker 1: to the Good Doctor, these belts were meant to treat
Speaker 1: problems like nervous prostration, hysteria, kidney disorders, liver disease, spinal
Speaker 1: injuries and stuff what is not going well in your brain.
Speaker 1: The devices were priced at around fifteen dollars to twenty
Speaker 1: dollars a princely some in the early nineteen century, the
Speaker 1: electric baths were a little bit different. They involved a
Speaker 1: patient getting into a special bathtub made out of a
Speaker 1: metallic material, whatever it might be. The tub was filled
Speaker 1: with water and that would include some form of electro
Speaker 1: light component in it to facilitate conductivity. According to one
Speaker 1: description by a doctor Maurice urn Uh, an electric bath,
Speaker 1: the type of mixture sometimes you know a type of
Speaker 1: acid would depend upon whatever ailment you were actually trying
Speaker 1: to treat. So here's a passage from his description quote.
Speaker 1: The water is slightly acidulated to increase its conductibility, and
Speaker 1: the acid varies according to cases. Nitric or hydrochloric acid
Speaker 1: is used for the extraction of mercury, silver or gold,
Speaker 1: other acids for that of lead. This done the negative
Speaker 1: pole of the pile, meaning a voltaic pile, is brought
Speaker 1: into contact with the sides of the bathing tub and
Speaker 1: the positive pole placed in the hands of the patient.
Speaker 1: The work of purification is now in full activity. The
Speaker 1: electrical current precipitates itself through the body of the sufferer,
Speaker 1: penetrating into the depth of his bones, pursues in all
Speaker 1: the tissues. Every particle of metal seizes it, restores its
Speaker 1: primitive form, and chasing it out of the organism, deposits
Speaker 1: it on the sides of the tub, where it becomes
Speaker 1: apparent to the naked eye. Well, that just sounds grand,
Speaker 1: don't it. It also sounds like hogwash to me. The
Speaker 1: process described would see deposits on the tub due to
Speaker 1: chemical changes within the water and the acid mixture. As
Speaker 1: electrical current was passing through it, It would not be
Speaker 1: an indicator that stuff was getting pushed out of the
Speaker 1: person's body and then accumulating on the sides of the tub. Rather,
Speaker 1: it would be a build up of stuff from the
Speaker 1: actual chemicals that were in the water already. This actually
Speaker 1: reminds me of ear candling, a practice that is equally dubious,
Speaker 1: and that practice a person with an ear ailment places
Speaker 1: a small candle in their ear canal and they light it. Now,
Speaker 1: according to those who practice this, the principle, the mechanical
Speaker 1: principle that makes this work, is that the burning flame
Speaker 1: wicks away stuff like earwax out of your ear. The
Speaker 1: idea that it kind of pulls that wax up through
Speaker 1: the candle. And when you're done, assuming you haven't set
Speaker 1: yourself on fire or anything, when you take the candle
Speaker 1: out and you blow it out, you see that there
Speaker 1: does seem to be some gunk around there. But these
Speaker 1: are candles that are made of gunk. If you just
Speaker 1: lit one of the candles and you just let it
Speaker 1: burn on its own, without being inside somebody's ear, you
Speaker 1: would get a very similar result. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: we're still seeing these old methods and these old tricks
Speaker 1: being used today, both by people who know better but
Speaker 1: who are pulling a con and some people who are
Speaker 1: well intentioned but misled. In general, the approach of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, particularly as the years went on, was to
Speaker 1: move away from delivering a dramatic shock the way the
Speaker 1: electrostatic approaches had in the eighteenth century, and more toward
Speaker 1: using low voltage currents to deliver therapist to patients. And
Speaker 1: most of the time the goal was to try and
Speaker 1: find the lowest possible intensity in order to treat the
Speaker 1: malath ease, because more is not always better, and finding
Speaker 1: a method to provide treatment with the minimum discomfort and
Speaker 1: the minimum side effects was really the goal. But our
Speaker 1: understanding remained limited. So let's move up to the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: the nineteen hundreds. At this point we had a better
Speaker 1: knowledge of how electricity works. We had discovered electrons for
Speaker 1: one thing. We knew the basic structure of the atom.
Speaker 1: By this point in the psychiatric medicine world, what was
Speaker 1: once called electroshock therapy today we call it electro convulsive
Speaker 1: therapy used electricity to deliver a current through the brain
Speaker 1: of a patient with the intent of triggering a small
Speaker 1: brief seizure on purpose. Now this is still done today
Speaker 1: with varying degrees of success, and it's also under much
Speaker 1: more carefully controlled circumstances today. Oh and sometimes it also
Speaker 1: is called shock treatment, which also happens to be the
Speaker 1: name of an amazing musical and a sort of sequel
Speaker 1: to the Rocky Horror picture show. But I digress. This
Speaker 1: electro convulsive therapy is used to treat conditions like major
Speaker 1: depression or bipolar disorder, and it's particularly for patients again
Speaker 1: who have not responded well to other types of treatment.
Speaker 1: And indeed, doctors learned back in the eighteenth century that
Speaker 1: seizures could sometimes help with certain disorders and diseases. It
Speaker 1: really has a medical beneficial effect. Now. Back in those days,
Speaker 1: they were typically induced through the use of certain chemicals,
Speaker 1: including one that became known as metrosol. That was until
Speaker 1: about eight when Lucy Obeni and Ugo Cerletti experimented with
Speaker 1: electricity to induce seizures instead of using chemicals. Many patients
Speaker 1: reported that after they had to take metrosol, that that
Speaker 1: chemical I was talking about a second ago, they would
Speaker 1: experience intense feelings of terror just before they had a seizure,
Speaker 1: and they were so intense and so unpleasant that patients
Speaker 1: would try to avoid taking the chemical for understandable reasons,
Speaker 1: they did not want to experience this traumatizing reaction, but
Speaker 1: that meant treatment was becoming even more challenging. So Beanie
Speaker 1: and Serletti actually were hoping that their approach using electricity
Speaker 1: to induce seizures rather than chemicals, would actually work better
Speaker 1: and not cause this intense reaction in patients, and it
Speaker 1: did seem to have that effect for about half the
Speaker 1: patients that tried it, so about a fifty success rate. Also,
Speaker 1: there were reports that patients would experience a mild form
Speaker 1: of amnesia about the treatment itself, so they would have
Speaker 1: some amnesia that were that the effects were right around
Speaker 1: when they experienced the treatment. It wasn't general amnesia, it
Speaker 1: wasn't severe, and it wasn't permanent either. People would over
Speaker 1: time be able to remember effects, but because they would
Speaker 1: be somewhat forgetful of the experience of the electro convulsive therapy,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't develop a lot of strong negative feelings toward it.
Speaker 1: They just didn't remember what it was like. Now, that
Speaker 1: does not mean it was actually pleasant to go through it,
Speaker 1: but it does mean that patients weren't necessarily avoiding treatment.
Speaker 1: Now that being said, this treatment was also used in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties as a way to control unruly patients
Speaker 1: in mental hospitals, a practice that was dramatized in the
Speaker 1: novel and in future play and film of One Flew
Speaker 1: Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The experience was painful and it
Speaker 1: could be dangerous, you know, seizures are are serious. Over time,
Speaker 1: doctors would adjust their approach to e CT to minimize
Speaker 1: the risks and the discomfort of the patient, but it
Speaker 1: was definitely something disturbing to witness in the early days.
Speaker 1: On top of that, some practitioners used e c T
Speaker 1: to treat things that were not disorders at all. For example,
Speaker 1: to quote unquote treat homosexuality. They were subscribing to the
Speaker 1: belief that homosexuality was behavioral disorder. Between that barbaric practice
Speaker 1: and the disturbing reports coming out of hospitals in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, electro convulsive therapy understandably got a pretty bad reputation.
Speaker 1: Now that does not mean it's an illegitimate practice, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't work for for some disorders. It does work,
Speaker 1: but because it was used poorly in several cases, and
Speaker 1: not just poorly but inhumanely in some cases, the overall
Speaker 1: approach got a pretty negative stigma attached to it. Now
Speaker 1: these days, the way it works is more measured and
Speaker 1: scientific and controlled. A patient is put under anesthesia so
Speaker 1: that they don't experience pain. They're given muscle RELAXANTCE as well,
Speaker 1: and that way it helps reduce the risk of seizure,
Speaker 1: the physical risks of seizure, and it certainly has proven
Speaker 1: to be effective to treat some patients who are dealing
Speaker 1: with massive severe depression for example. So the stigma still remains,
Speaker 1: but for some people it has literally become a life
Speaker 1: saving therapy. Now, there are some other uses of electricity
Speaker 1: in medicine, some of them are disputed. Uh there are
Speaker 1: devices that claim to use mild electrical stimulation to encourage
Speaker 1: healing in wounds. So let's say that you've broken a
Speaker 1: bone or you've got a bad cut. There are some
Speaker 1: devices that say that using electrical impulses you can encourage
Speaker 1: the healing process and speed it up. There are others
Speaker 1: that are using electricity to help manage pain. But there's
Speaker 1: also a lot of disagreement over whether there's actually a
Speaker 1: real effect happening with these devices or if the effects
Speaker 1: are more psychological in nature. In other words, if you
Speaker 1: believe it works, it seems to work for you, there
Speaker 1: are there are a lot of questions about it. It
Speaker 1: might work, it might not. A report on transcutaneous electrical
Speaker 1: nerve stimulation or TENS, as a practice in which electricity
Speaker 1: is used to reduce pain. It's thought to inhibit part
Speaker 1: of the nervous system that processes the pain sensation. It's
Speaker 1: a good example of this issue in medicine. The report
Speaker 1: is titled Using TENS for Pain Control the State of
Speaker 1: the Evidence. It was published in the journal Pain Manage,
Speaker 1: and it states the evidence for TENS efficacy is conflicting
Speaker 1: and requires not only description but also critique. Population specific
Speaker 1: systemic reviews and meta analyzes are emerging indicating both HF
Speaker 1: and LF tens are being shown to provide analgesia, specifically
Speaker 1: when applied at a strong, non painful intensity. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, the jury is still out on this, and
Speaker 1: there's also still some mystery around the actual mechanisms of
Speaker 1: electricity and its role in healing. That doesn't mean electrotherapy
Speaker 1: as a sham, or that there's no way for it
Speaker 1: to work. I want to be clear about that, But
Speaker 1: what it does mean is we do not have a
Speaker 1: full understanding of what is actually going on. That's just
Speaker 1: like weird man. Like with technology, we typically know if
Speaker 1: something works, and we typically know how it works and
Speaker 1: why it works. Typically there are exceptions, but in medicine,
Speaker 1: sometimes we know that something seems to be working, but
Speaker 1: we have no idea why it's working, or why it
Speaker 1: might work in one case but not in another similar case,
Speaker 1: or whether the effects we see are due directly to
Speaker 1: the treatment or more through the perception that the patient
Speaker 1: and the doctors have of that treatment. It's weird man.
Speaker 1: I'm glad I'm stuck with technology because that's way easier
Speaker 1: to understand than you know us. Now. I plan on
Speaker 1: doing some more episodes related to this topic. I plan
Speaker 1: on revisiting topics that we have covered in past episodes
Speaker 1: of tech stuff, like the electric chair. It's a terrifying
Speaker 1: use of electricity that I think we need to revisit,
Speaker 1: or devices that are meant to stimulate muscles using electrical pulses.
Speaker 1: I get ads for that occasionally because now that I
Speaker 1: am more health conscious. I tend to get ads for
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff related to that. Some of them
Speaker 1: might be somewhat suspect, So keep on the lookout for
Speaker 1: those episodes. They should be coming out before too long.
Speaker 1: But as always, remember to ask questions and to use
Speaker 1: critical thinking and do your homework, because that's the way
Speaker 1: you are best suited to getting what you need. Whether
Speaker 1: it's a specific kind of device that you want or
Speaker 1: you're looking at treatments, it's always good for you to
Speaker 1: do some research and see if you can find as
Speaker 1: non biased a source of information as possible in order
Speaker 1: to draw your conclusions. Because there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people out there who either consciously are trying to take
Speaker 1: advantage of you or unconsciously promoting pseudo science thinking that
Speaker 1: they're doing the right thing, and that doesn't necessarily bode
Speaker 1: well for anyone out there. And whether it's ill intention
Speaker 1: or not, I want you guys to get the absolute
Speaker 1: best out of life you possibly can. So critical thinking,
Speaker 1: I know, I say it a lot. What I also
Speaker 1: say a lot is if you have suggestions for future
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out and tell me
Speaker 1: what they are. You can email me at tech Stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. Pop on over to
Speaker 1: our podcast website that's tech stuff podcast dot com. You
Speaker 1: will find links there for every episode that we have
Speaker 1: ever published. You will also find where we are on
Speaker 1: social media, so you can hunt me down on Facebook
Speaker 1: or Twitter and get in touch with me that way.
Speaker 1: You can also find a link to our online store,
Speaker 1: where every purchase you make goes to help the show,
Speaker 1: and we greatly appreciate it, and I will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Hext Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.