Electric organ

“ A pipe organ is operated by air. It has bellows which are simply one form of an air pump. A boy is often employed to turn a crank which works the bellows. Down in the basement underneath our pipe organ I will show you how a half-horse-power electric motor takes the place of a boy. We found a dark and dirty corner where a boy used to stand and turn a crank every time æsthetically inclined people enjoyed an organ recital in the room above. Science, which has not been given credit for being humanitarian, put an electric motor into that dark corner and sent the boy up stairs to hear the music. ”

“ We know of small organs where the electric action has been introduced for no other reason than that of facilitating the use of octave couplers, which are now a mere matter of wiring and give no additional weight to the touch. ”

“ This is entirely consistent with what is known of the physiology of these two kinds of effectors, for muscles not only move parts, but generate through their activity a certain amount of electricity, while the electric organs have lost the power of producing molar movements and have enormously increased that of producing electricity. Electric organs, though often described as a special class of effectors, are in reality merely modified muscles and therefore can not be regarded properly as a new appropriation of the nervous system. ”

“ My claim that man is an electric organism is confirmed by Professor Loeb and Dr. Mathews in their recent experiments at the Chicago University.
"Electrical charges in the atoms of the bodily tissue are responsible for all the active phenomena of life. In other words, electricity is the basis of life." ”

“ In the future he may not eat eleven hundred meals per annum, but a few mouthfuls of concentrated food daily and an electric supply attachment adjusted to his body during sleeping hours may renew and rejuvenate his electric organism. It may be that in the future every residence will contain a chamber supplied with air and gases containing all the elements of the body so adjusted as to give it continual life and vigor by merely breathing in its life-giving elements a few hours each day. ”

“ As before intimated, the mass of physicians at present, who treat more or less electrically, do so with no knowledge, or next to none, of the great versatility of action of which the electric current is capable. They know nothing of the electrical polarization of the living organism in health, nor how it is variously affected in disease. The particular electrical state of the diseased organs is a matter foreign to their minds. They appear to suppose the point to be immediately aimed at as a means of cure is to get the electricity from the machine into the affected part or parts ”

“ It is also ascertained, that of the two sorts of nerves which supply every muscle, the nerve of sensibility is a positive pole of a Voltaic circuit, while the nerve of motion, or the muscle into which it passes, is a negative pole. So that the sensor nerves act as electric telegraphs to carry the sensations to the brain, and inform it what is needed, while the motor nerves bring back the volition to the muscles—the brain acting as a galvanic battery, very much like the electric organs of certain fishes. ”

“ Tenth—These same electric forces are condensed into smaller magnets and electric organisms or machines, which form electric centres and build up all tangible forms of matter—human, animal and vegetable. ”

“ All admit that the force of elements forms a part of the anatomic structure, and there must be electricity. When oxygen is taken into a body it excites the elements in the same manner as the negative chlorine attacks the zinc in the battery. The electrical circuit of the body is the circulating blood, and when the oxygen and the nitrogen are taken in through the lungs the electro-negative ions go in one direction. ”

“ That electricity was physical life, and digestion and assimilation of food were purely electrical processes; while the five senses—seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and feeling—were all electrical manifestations, seeing and hearing being a form of wireless telegraphy.
That the electric combination of positive and negative atoms weaves the visible structure that envelops the soul. The electric elements from the lungs and stomach enter into the blood, and set the human battery in organic operation and create and continue human life. ”

“ The statement has been made that "every active living cell is essentially an electric battery," and it is believed that every activity of living matter, such as the rhythmic contraction of the heart, the passage of a nerve impulse, etc., is accompanied by an electric disturbance in the protoplasm of the tissues in question. ”

“ If we then stimulated the part of the brain we are now considering at different places with electric needles, using a weak induction current, we should see him moving different members according to the different regions touched—now an arm, now a leg, now the whole head. If we were to place the electrodes in the centre for the hand, and then gradually increase the strength of the current, the activity of the hand centre would throw other centres into activity. ”

“ You cannot see or hear or feel or taste or smell or exercise any of the functions of the body without bringing to your aid the electric force which permeates all forms and substance. Electricity creates the mystery of physical life and provides the food and sustenance necessary to its growth and development. Electricity works the miracle of digestion and assimilation and converts inert matter into blood and bone, tissue and muscle, and organizes man's body into an electric machine, and runs it as truly and perfectly by electric energy as the electric motor or generator is run by electricity. ”

“ Through it we live, for what life is possible without electricity? And as for the human Brain itself, it not only exercises such action, it appears to offer the original of all conductors, coherers, multipliers, condensers, transmitters, and all other electrical apparatus whatsoever, and to make life of a higher kind possible through these. Long years have passed since Dubois Raymond began the serious study of the electric phenomena of nerves, muscles, and glands; long years have passed since he showed by experiment that the magnetic current can be deflected by the Will. ”

“ Blake says: "The reason ether prevents the pain of operations is because it stops the coagulation of the nerves. All atoms of matter are charged with electricity. All vital actions are always connected with electricity. All drug effects are brought about by electrical charges made with the meetings of the ions in the blood and those in the medicine."
How strongly does Prof. Blake sustain my theory when he says, "All atoms of matter are charged with electricity. All vital actions are always connected with electricity." ”

“ The nerve-quieting ions are those that bear charges of positive electricity, such as atoms of sodium, potassium, calcium and hydrogen, and tend to keep the colloidal particles of the nerves in a state of solution, so that the nerves remain inactive. The nerve-stimulating ions are atoms of such substances as fluorine and chlorine, which carry charges of negative electricity and cause the nerve particles to coalesce or become jellied, in which condition the nerve is active, the degree of activity depending upon the intensity of the stimulation. ”

“ No nutritive change, even in a single cell, can take place without a disturbance of electric equilibrium and the development of an electric current, be it ever so diminutive. Nerve force, electricity and "vital force" are identical in so far as they are all manifestations of electromagnetic energy. Every histological unit in an animal body is a diminutive battery in which such energy is evolved. ”

“ Galva.—That electricity has proved of great use in the treatment of disease is unquestionable, though it is quite as certain that it has opened a way to quacks and other swindlers of fleecing invalids and others, and in this way it has proved a great enemy to medicine. As regards its uses in medicine, it has given us the electro-cautery, electrolysis, the portable electric light—a most valuable addition to our consulting-rooms—and it has given us the electric currents so much used in the treatment of nervous diseases. No person should start practising on herself with the electric current. ”

“ Neuralgic affections are frequently found difficult, or even impossible, to be cured by means of medicines, and yet, in the very same cases, these affections yield and disappear with comparative facility when brought under the electric current, judiciously applied, according to the principles of this new system. ”

“ It has been found that simple electricity, artificially produced, and sent along the nerves of a dead body, excites muscular action. The brain of a newly-killed animal being taken out, and replaced by a substance which produces electric action, the operation of digestion, which had been interrupted by the death of the animal, was resumed, shewing the absolute identity of the brain with a galvanic battery. ”

“ I contend that man's body is an electric machine or organism, and electricity is its vital force and governing power, and all sickness is caused by the electrical derangement of the bodily organism. Electricity is the force which organized the body machine, which runs the body machine, and whose loss or deficiency cripples and finally destroys it. ”

“ The lungs are the great electric reservoirs of the body and take the electric current of the sun from the atmosphere as constantly and naturally as the electric wire takes the current from the battery or the dynamo.
Then it imparts electric energy to the blood and sends it as an electric current and fluid coursing through every part of the body, producing vitalizing life and growth, causing the heart valves to beat and pump with marvelous power, the pulse to throb, and the whole machine to pulsate, thrill and whir with electric life and energy. ”

“ Hardaway, so that among a limited number of specialists this one property of galvanism was thoroughly appreciated; but to the profession at large the electric current still remained the same mysterious agent, regarded with indifference, with distrust, or with awe, until Apostoli, in 1883, gave us the key to the successful application of electricity for the destruction of fibroid tumors by urging, 1. Localization, the limitation of effect to one active pole, which must be placed within the tissues; and, 2. The use of currents stronger than any hitherto applied in medical practice. ”

“ It was early attacked by Ludimar Hermann, who maintained that a living untouched tissue, such as a muscle, is not the subject of electric currents so long as it is at rest, is isoelectric in substance, and therefore need not be supposed to be made up of electric molecules, all the electric phenomena which it manifests being due to internal molecular changes associated with activity or injury. ”

“ So Professor Bell reasons, and granting that the human brain is merely a store-house of electricity for our bodily needs, of electricity not essentially different from that which we know elsewhere, it must be possible to apply the same electrical laws to the brain as to any other electric apparatus and to get similar results. ”

“ Nerve tissue is the highest form of atomic balance that is visible, and the true basis of form structure that has vitality to meet the shifting electric currents. The tiny cells joined themselves to form new structures to respond to the electric waves, while the lower magnetic induction of the planet sent its power over the new tissue to hold it in form so that the organism could be partially permanent in form in its new environment. ”

“ A.D. 1756.—In the “Subtil Medium Proved,” etc., of Mr. R. Lovett, lay-clerk of the cathedral church at Worcester, England, are shown numerous medical cures successfully made by electricity. He asserts that the electric fluid is almost a specific in all cases of violent pains, like obstinate headache, the toothache, sciatica, etc., but that it has not succeeded so well in rheumatic affections. He states that electricity properly administered has never caused injury, and he alludes to equally successful cures made by the Rev. John Wesley and by Dr. Wetzel, of Upsal. ”

“ These are often difficult to manage by the use of medicine, and not seldom prove fatal, in spite of the best talent and skill which the profession can afford. But the electric current, rightly selected and scientifically applied, destroys or neutralizes the virus and restores the normal polarization, and so effects a cure. ”

“ If, in electro-therapy, an electric current is applied to the cartilages of the long bones in children whose limbs have apparently been arrested in development, the result is a rapid increase in length, amounting to a luxuriant osteogenesis.
Since we know that the electric current can stimulate the nerve filaments and the fibres of the striped muscles when they have been rendered inactive from the effects of paresis or even of paralysis, we realise that electricity can exert an influence over the entire physiological life of an organism. ”

“ If the patient be immersed up to his neck in an electric bath, much stronger currents can be passed without causing either pain or injury, as in this case the whole area of the skin in contact with the water acts as an electrode. In passing the current it must be remembered that the negative electrode or kathode is the more painful of the two, and its action more stimulating than the positive electrode or anode, which is sedative. If a muscle be stimulated over its motor point, it will contract with a sharp twitch and then become quiescent. ”