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Electricity in 19Th Century Medicine and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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Electricity in 19Th Century Medicine and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein 20 January 2011 AUANews CUA Annual Meeting developing medical need. The state- ▼ Continued from page 19 of-the-art facility comprises 10 floors, 209 beds and 5 operating suites. It fea- tures an outpatient clinic, endoscopic across China. simulator training rooms, and urody- While in China the AUA delega- namic simulation and multimedia tion was given a tour of the Urology training rooms as well as sexual edu- Department at Xijing Hospital, Fourth Military Medical University, cation and family planning exhibits by Drs. Yuan Jianlin and Xiaojian for the public. Yang. They also toured the Peking The AUA congratulates the CUA University Wujieping Urology on achieving this significant mile- Medical Center, which opened on stone in its history. To commemo- August 29, 2010 in Beijing (fig. 2). rate the opening of the Wujieping The facility is named after the founder Urology Medical Center, Dr. Lacy of Chinese urology, Dr. Jieping Wu, presented the CUA with an original who worked as a visiting scholar from Fig. 2. AUA delegation tours endoscopic simulation training area at Wujieping Urology Medical Center. William P. Didusch urological draw- 1947 to 1948 at the University of ing. Additional updates regarding Chicago under Dr. Charles B. AUA/CUA collaborations will be Huggins. is continually increasing as the aver- China increases, and the construc- provided in future issues of The clinical demand for urology age life span of the population in tion of this facility responds to this AUANews. ◆ HISTORY Corner Electricity in 19th Century Medicine Electricity, Galvanism and Vitalism gram into animal electricity, which he regarded as a vital force and which was Electricity became a focus of natural soon called “galvanism.” and Mary Shelley’s philosophy in the early modern period. Frankenstein Alessandro Volta, Professor of By the 17th century electrostatic gen- Experimental Physics at theUniversity erators could produce electricity at high of Pavia, disagreed with his colleague’s Dr. Matthis Krischel Victor Frankenstein, the novel’s pro- voltage and low current. By the mid Ulm, Germany interpretation. Volta understood elec- tagonist, is a student of natural philos- 18th century the Leiden jar was devel- tricity primarily as a physical and not ophy, chemistry and anatomy at the oped. It could store the “electric fluid” a biological phenomenon. He pro- After Luigi Galvani University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria. He and deliver it in a shock. Around the duced electric current between zinc published his puts together a human form from same time an experiment devised by and silver electrodes, and in 1799 he research on animal bones and body parts that he collects Benjamin Franklin established that constructed a pile of zinc and silver electricity in 1791 from charnel houses and dissecting lightning is a discharge of electricity. plates separated by pieces of brine- and Alessandro Volta developed the rooms, hoping that he “might infuse a In 1786 Luigi Galvani, Professor of soaked cloth. This “voltaic pile” would first battery in 1799, electricity became spark of being into the lifeless thing Medicine and Anatomy at the emit a steady current and function as a field of study in physics and medi- that lay at my feet. It was already one University of Bologna, discovered that a battery. cine. I will discuss the promises that in the morning; the rain pattered dis- severed frog’s legs twitched when he electricity held for medicine in the mally against the panes, and my can- conducted an electric charge to them early 19th century as well as the fear dle was nearly burnt out, when, by the (fig. 2). Galvani started a research pro- ▼ Continued on page 21 that it caused. This fear is exemplified glimmer of the half-extinguished light, in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, first I saw the dull yellow eye of the crea- published anonymously in 1818. ture open; it breathed hard, and a con- 1 vulsive motion agitated its limbs.” In ▼ Continued on page <None> many cinematic adoptions this is the central scene. Often the “spark of being” is delivered by a strike of light- ning, as in the iconic 1931 adaption, staring Boris Karloff as “the monster” (fig. 1). Shelley’s novel was successful in the decades following its publication in 1818, and today the story of Victor Frankenstein and his creature has become a modern myth. While most people know Frankenstein as a work of gothic horror, I argue that it can also be read as Victorian science fiction that imagines the possibilities of the med- ical applications of electricity. Fig. 1. Boris Karloff as “the monster” (1931) Fig. 2. Illustration from Luigi Galvani, De viribus electricitatis in motu musculari commentarius (1791) AUANews January 2011 21 History Corner began to quiver, the adjoining muscles to the phrenic nerve and diaphragm of first half of the 19th century galvanism ▼ Continued from page 20 were horribly contorted, and the left the body of Mathew Clydesdale, who could be seen as a force to control dead eye actually opened.”2 An application had been hanged for murder just an and living bodies. In an era in which Galvanism and Control Over Dead of electrodes to the ear and rectum hour earlier (fig. 4). This had the effect the experimental method was estab- and Living Bodies “excited in the muscle[s] contractions that “full, nay, laborious breathing, lished in the biomedical sciences, the much stronger than in the preceding instantly commenced. The chest ethical question of what the experi- After Galvani’s death in 1798, his experiments, [so as] almost to give an nephew, Giovanni Aldini, Professor of heaved, and fell; the belly was pro- menter should do to dead bodies and appearance of re-animation.”2 Shelley’s Physics at the University of Bologna, truded, and again collapsed, with the living research subjects is raised in description of the animation of 3 defended his uncle’s interpretation of relaxing and retiring diaphragm.” Shelley’s novel. Frankenstein’s creature, which was animal electricity. Between 1800 and Electric current could just as well What can physicians learn from this published 15 years after Aldini’s 1805 Aldini traveled through Europe be used to control living bodies. From today? Like electricity in the early 19th account, is markedly similar. and performed electrical experiments 1800 onward electric therapy became century, many new technologies and Galvanic experiments on corpses on corpses (fig. 3). At the Royal College established as a treatment for nervous therapies can instill apprehension or remained in fashion throughout the of Surgeons in London he galvanized disorders ranging from hysteria to paral- fear in the public or individual patients. first half of the 19th century. In 1818 the body of John Forster, who had been ysis. Most patients treated with electric Medical practitioners must take these Andrew Ure, Professor of Natural executed for murder. Aldini connected therapy were female, treated for hyste- reactions seriously and address them Philosophy at Anderson’s Institution 4 electrodes to the body so that “the jaw ria and often both. Electricity was used as well as use the tools of their trade in Glasgow, connected a voltaic pile as a means for the physician to exer- responsibly in order not to turn loose cise control over the patient’s body. another Frankensteinian monster. ◆ Golding Bird was a physician at Guy’s Hospital in London and Fellow 1. Shelley M: Frankenstein. London: Colburn of the Royal College of Physicians who and Bentley 1831; p 43. lectured and published on “electricity 2. Aldini G: An Account of the Late and galvanism in their physiological Improvements in Galvanism. London: Cuthell and Martin 1803; pp 191-194. and therapeutical relations” as well as 3. Ure A: An account of some experiments the “pathological characters of urinary made on the body of a criminal immedi- deposits.”5 In 1849 he reported the ately after execution, with physiological application of electrotherapy to treat and practical observations. Quart J Sci 6 urological problems. “In more than 1819; : 283. 4. Morus IR: Frankenstein’s Children. one case of want of power in emptying Electricity, Exhibition and Experiment in the bladder in hysterical girls, I have Early Nineteenth-Century London. succeeded in curing this annoying Princeton: Princeton University Press symptom by passing a pretty strong cur- 1998; p 146. rent from the sacrum to the pubes. My 5. Hirsch A: Biographisches Lexikon der her- vorragenden Ärzte aller Zeiten und own impression has been, however, Völker. München: Verlag von that the pain of the current and the Urban|&|Schwarzenberg 1962; vol 1, p dread of its repetition have constituted 548. the real elements of success in these 6. Bird G: Lectures on Electricity and 6 Galvanism in Their Physiological and cases.” Therapeutical Relations. London: These examples illustrate that in the Kessinger 1849; p 148. Fig. 3. Illustration from Giovanni Aldini, Essai Théorique et Expérimental sur le Galvanisme (1804) Fig. 4. Dorctor Ure galvanizing body of murderer Clydsdale. Illustration from Louis Figuier, Les merveilles de la Science (1867)..
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