Electrical stimulation

“ The intensity of the electrical variation produced by a given disturbance is modified by the molecular condition of the wire. Annealing, or previous continued vibration, enhances the electric effect. The abnormal response due to molecular modification is transformed into normal by continued vibration. The intensity of electromotive variation is increased with increasing intensity of stimulation. ”

“ Not only do irritable tissues respond to electrical currents, but certain electrical changes in the tissues themselves are invariably associated with stimulation, whether normal or artificial, and form perhaps the most constant and essential feature of the stimulation-process. ”

“ EFFECT OF ELECTRIC STIMULUS OF VARYING INTENSITY AND DURATION.
The form of stimulus which is extensively used in physio­logic­al in­ves­ti­ga­tions, is the electric stimulus of induction shock which is easily graduated by the use of the well known sliding induction coil, in which the approach of the secondary to the primary coil, indicated by the higher reading of the scale, gives rise to increasing intensity of stimulus. The retarding effect of electrical stimulus on growth has already been demonstrated in record taken on a moving plate (Fig. 61) . ”

“ The downward current, running with the downward and outward course of the nerves, tends to depletion and weakness, for the reason that it runs off from the system the electro-vital fluid. The upward current, on the other hand, running against the nerves, inward towards their source, feeds the system with fresh electricity, and gives a tonic effect. ”

“ We have seen that the wave of molecular disturbance in a living animal tissue under stimulus is accompanied by a wave of electrical disturbance; that in certain types of tissue the stimulated is relatively positive to the less disturbed, while in others it is the reverse; that it is essential to the obtaining of electric response to have the contacts leading to the galvanometer unequally affected by excitation ”

“ Do you not see that, by placing my negative pole on the already overcharged and inflamed eyes, I attract to them yet more of the electro-vital fluid, and so increase their positive condition and aggravate the inflammation? and that, by presenting my positive electrode to the eyes already more or less paralyzed, I repel what little electro-vitality there was there, and so make the nerves all the more negative and dead? And yet, I repeat it, this is precisely the plan of almost all the men who [68] use electricity in therapeutic practice with any regard to its polarization. ”

“ Then he gave a rapid outline of what might be a system of thinking by electricity.
Everyone knows, who knows anything about the subject, that an electric current passing inside of a coil of wire induces an electric current in that wire. Now, if the human brain be taken as a battery, then currents are constantly passing from it to various parts of the body, and the head may be considered in a state of constant electrical excitement, the intensity varying with the character of the thought processes. ”

“ I am disposed to think that, by the omnipotent power of His will, He controls and uses electricity, in its various modifications, as the immediate moving-force by which He accomplishes all the changes in the physical universe. It is fast becoming a generally-received opinion among modern savans, that every body in nature is really magnetic, more or less; and that all visible or sensible changes are but the result of changing poles. Chemical affinities and revulsions are believed to be only the more delicate forms of electrical attraction and repulsion ”

“ I feel no hesitation in expressing it as my belief that electricity, in one phase or another, and controlled only by WILL, is the grand motive-power of the universe. I believe that, in the form of electro-vital fluid, the great Creator employs it as His immediate agent to carry on all the functions of animal life ”

“ 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. ”

“ In his opinion, the propagation of a nervous impulse is a sort of successive molecular polarization, like magnetism. But that this agent is a force, as analogous to electricity as is magnetism, is shown not only by the fact that the transmission of electricity along a nerve will cause the contraction of the muscle to which it leads, but also by the more important fact that the contraction of a muscle is excited by diminishing its normal electrical current ”

“ The transference of electrification from one place to another is effected by the motion of corpuscles from the place where there is a gain of positive electrification to the place where there is a gain of negative. A positively electrified body is one that has lost some of its corpuscles."*4* According to this view, then, electricity is not a form of energy but a form of matter; or, to be more precise, the electrical corpuscle is the fundamental structure out of which the atom of matter is built. ”

“ Although we are not continually made sensible of it, men and women are electrical machines. The researches of Matteucci, Dubois-Reymond, Rutter, and Faraday, prove that there exists, both in the muscles and nerves of human beings and all animals, a natural electricity, independent of mechanical, physical, or chemical actions, exterior or interior; that this electricity is manifested under the form of closed currents circulating along the muscles or nerves; that the presence of this free electricity is subordinate to the state of the life of the animal, and disappears with the vital force ”

“ In passing a current through a tissue we are artifically setting up differences of electrical potential between different portions of the irritable elements, and according to the above conception this should always cause excitation if the current is strong enough and rises to its maximum with sufficient rapidity. That this is in fact the case needs no emphasis. The electrical current is recognized as the most universal form of stimulus ”

“ But when a patient is under treatment, the conducting-cords, the electrodes, and so much of the patient's person as is traversed by the current while passing from the positive electrode through to the negative electrode, are also included in the whole circuit. And whatever elements may serve to conduct the current in any part of its circuit—be they metal, fluid, nerve, muscle, or bone—the same are all, for the time, component parts of one complete magnet, which, in all its parts, is subject to the law of polarization, precisely as if it were one magnetized bar of steel. ”

“ The agency of these creatures has been identified with electricity in the most general sense. The peculiar energy of the animal has been made to produce the effects which are produced by an electrical discharge or a voltaic current:—not only to destroy life in small animals, but to 611 deflect a magnet, to make a magnet, to decompose water, and to produce a spark. ”

“ Taking off the head of an animal, or intercepting, in any way, the influence of its will upon the muscles of the part excited, has precisely the same effect. But the will is not able to controul the effects of electricity, when the electricity is otherwise sufficiently strong to excite muscles to contraction. I have repeatedly found that even by the strongest voluntary contractions of the muscles of my arm, I have not been able altogether to counteract the involuntary ones, produced by electrical sparks, nor have I found that frogs could ever counteract them. ”

“ 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 ”

“ We have seen that stimulus produces a certain excitatory change in living substances, and that the excitation produced sometimes expresses itself in a visible change of form, as seen in muscle; that in many other cases, however—as in nerve or retina—there is no visible alteration, but the disturbance produced by the stimulus exhibits itself in certain electrical changes, and that whereas the mechanical mode of response is limited in its application, this electrical form is universal. ”

“ He had connected the phenomenon with a theory of his own: that electricity—that is, common friction electricity, the only mode of electrical action then known—was the medium of all nervous action; and this had led him into a protracted investigation of the subject, during which he had varied the original experiment in a thousand ways, and he had now suspended the frog's legs to the iron balcony, in order to discover if atmospheric electricity would have any effect on the muscles of the animal. ”

“ 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 stimulant and tonic effects under consideration, although shared to some extent by other methods of electrization, are here far more comprehensive and pronounced, a fact which is not surprising, when we reflect that in the electric bath not only are all the organs indirectly influenced through stimulation of the nervous centres, but each separate organ is at the same time directly acted upon by the current. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By C. B. Radcliffe, M.D. Macmillan.
[2] See Mr. Netten Radcliffe upon the differential reaction of voltaic and induced currents of electricity. Note to page 331, vol. i., of Bazire’s translation of Trousseau’s “Clinical Medicine.” Hardwicke.
[3] This observation, made in 1873, requires some qualification now (1886) . At several of the great medical schools, though not at all, electrical treatment has been transferred from the hospital porter to some member of the hospital staff; and at more than one a systematic course of lectures upon electro-therapeutics has been delivered. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If we now stimulate the end A by a tap, or better still by rapid torsional vibration, a "current of action" will be found to flow in the wire in one direction. Stimulation of B on the other hand, gives rise to a current in the opposite direction. The object of the block C is to prevent the molecular disturbance produced by stimulus at one end of the wire from reaching the other. ”

“ What must be that mutual action of molecules having unlike motions, which, as we see, is the universal antecedent of electrical disturbance? The answer to this question does not seem difficult to reach, if we take the simplest case—the case of con­tact-elec­tri­city. When two pieces of metal of the same kind, and at the same temperature, are applied to one another, there is no electrical excitation; but, if the metals applied to one another be of different kinds, there is a genesis of electricity. ”

“ There appears to me to be an unwarrantable assumption in confidently attributing the long absence from the heavens of marked electrical phenomena, and the failure of the electric machine to give its spark, to an unquestioned deficiency of atmospheric electricity. Electrical manifestations take place only when the plus and minus conditions are existing, in relation to each other, somewhat near, or not very remote; and the visible phenomena appear when the positive and negative rush together, so as to produce a polar equilibrium. ”

“ It is the active cause of the discharge of the electrical life current from the brain to the sensory and motor nerves. For example, we drive away a troublesome fly by discharging, through the power of attention, the proper electrical current along the motor nerves, thereby producing the desired movements. I cite this to give an idea of the power by which the electrical flow of the system can be controlled and drawn back to its seven centres. ”