The Franklinic interrupted current, or, My new system of therapeutic administration of static electricity / by William James Morton.

  • Morton, William J. (William James), 1846-1920.
Date:
1891
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Franklinic interrupted current, or, My new system of therapeutic administration of static electricity / by William James Morton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Reprinted from the Medical Record, January 24, 189T. t 11 mi INTERRUPTED CURRENT; TION OF STA TIC By WILLIAM JAMES MORTON, M.D., 20 FEB 9faj MY NEW SYSTEM OF THERAPEUTIC ADMINISTRA £7 ELECTRICITY! NEW YORK CITY. FORMER PROFESSOR OF DISEASES OF THE MIND AND NERVOUS SYSTEM. UNIVERSITY OF VFRMON.'T * ry PBrcinnMT The object of this paper is to lay before the profession more explicitly the writer’s new system of treatment of disease by Franklinic or static electricity. The old sys- tem by sparks and other forms of the disruptive discharge upon the person is already sufficiently familiar. What I here designate as my new system has developed itself to me gradually during the last ten years. Parts of it I have published, other parts not. Granting and acting upon that moral dictum which forbids the physician from pat- enting his inventions and discoveries, I may remark in passing, as illustrative of the disadvantages under which Eig. i. Uninterrupted Primary Circuit of a Holtz Machine, with or without Condensers. Rotating plate ; b, b, collecting combs ; r, r, prime conduc ors d 4 discharging rods; ,, r, Leyden jars ; ff conducting cofdsW^ sponge or other electrodes. Upon grasping the two electrodes and setting thf machine m motion no current is felt and no action on nerve and muscle perceived. he is placed thereby, that some makers of Holtz machines are now generally attaching my inventions to their ma- chines and adopting my methods without the slightest credit, while one even has gone so far as to take out pa- tents for the very things I had published widely. The demands which are daily made upon electro-therapeutics in general and its brilliant extension into the domain of gynecology induces me to now present the facts in their entirety, in order that they may take their share, according to their merits, in the universal progress. Up to the time of the writer’s first apparatus in 1880. and first publication in 1881, concerning “ anew induction current in medical electricity,” 2 static electricity had been applied medically by administering a spark, or some modi- fication of it, direct to the person of the patient, or by giv- ing m the same direct manner a single shock from a L A LL Fr°m lhe earliest medical electrifications by the Abbe Nollet, in 1734, onward and successively through the revivals of the practice by Golding Bird, Sir William W. Gull, and Wilks, of Guy’s Hospital, London, in 1837, 1 51, and 1873 ; by Schwanda and Clemmens respec- tively in Austria and Germany; by Vigoroux and Char- cot, in Paris in 1879, and by myself in America in 1880, we become familiar with breeze, spray, sparks, and shock but no mention is made of current disassociated r°m the spark delivered to the person, nor prior to my own had any electrodes been shown by which a cur rent, except in spark form, could be developed from a Holtz or other influence machine. When, in general nerve and muscle reactions were spoken and written of, reference was had to galvanic and to faradic currents from coils an^ voltaic cells, or from coils and magnets, but not to any current derivable from frictional electric- ity- The spark and static electricity had become synony- mous terms. That no one during more than one hun- dred and fifty years should have sought out the kinetic or current feature of the static discharge (in other than spark form) and harnessed it to an electrode capable of bring mg it into use, seems most remarkable—the more so since my kinetic form produces a far greater and more power- ful nerve and muscle stimulation per second than the spark form, and if discovered before the days of the sec ondary coil would at once have brought the frictional machine into the front rank of current administrations. My new system, published and unpublished, comprises the development by an influence machine of a rapidly in- terrupted and graduated current, by means of a circuit breaker, introduced into a circuit with and without con- densers, and in the medical applications of this current without and within the human body by moistened sponge or other electrodes, just as in the case of the ordinary galvanic and faradic currents. It involves the removal of the spark, in itself more or less disagreeable and painful and often difficult to local- ize, especially about the face and neck, away from the patient’s body, and yet retaining all the physiological ef- fects of the kinetic or current part of the circuit. The spark is no longer a direct feature of the administration ; it occurs at some distant part of the necessarily closed circuit, and in modified form now becomes mainly a reg- .f^ Ip: 2* Static Universal Electrode. Interrupted primary circuit of a Holtz Machine, without condensers. Parts lettered same as in Fig. r. /, /, Static uni- versal electrode in circuit. Upon grasping the two electrodesand drawing the two brass balls /, /, of the circuit-breaking electrode apart a current is felt causing vigorous muscular contractions in ratio with the distance apart of the balls /, and as long as sparks will pass between them, in contradistinction to no reaction produced m Fig. 1. Patient insulated. Method applicable to small machines. With large machines method illustrated in Fig. 4 is recommended. « Read hr for A Mew v°rik Neurological Society, Dec. 2, 1890. Read before the New York Academv of Medirinp Moral, „ iaa. ulator for timing the discharge of the equalizing poten- tials. The circuit-breaker is a pair of adjustable metallic electrodes, introduced at any point of the circuit, h a narrow air space between the balls; the circuit “ makes when a small spark overcomes the resistance of the inter- vening air, and “ breaks ” when it fails to do so, and the current is due to rapidly successive equalizations of the differences of potential of oppositely charged condensers, whether prime conductors or with the addition of Leyden jars. The circuit-breaker serves : 1. To afford time (infinitely brief) to the prime con- ductors and condensers, if used, to charge.