Accidents from the electric current : a contribution to the study of the action of currents of high potential upon the human organism / by Philip Coombs Knapp.

  • Knapp, Philip Coombs.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Accidents from the electric current : a contribution to the study of the action of currents of high potential upon the human organism / by Philip Coombs Knapp. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    ACCIDENTS FROM THE ELECTRIC CURRENT.1 A Contribution to the Study of the Action of Currents of High Potential upon the Human Organism. BY PHILIP COOMBS KNAPP, A.M., M.D., Clinical Instructor in Diseases of the Nervous System, Harvard Med- ical Sclwol; Physician for Diseases of the Nervous System to Out-Patients, Boston City Hospital. Within the last fifty years, since man has made use of the electrical current, certain diseases have been recognized by the physician as due to the various con- trivances by which electricity has been rendered capa- ble of service. Telegrapher's cramp, the telephone ear, and photo-electric ophthalmia are all due to the mechanisms employed in the use of electricity, or to the effects obtained from them, but none of them are caused by the action of the electric current itself. Only in one class of diseases can electricity itself be said to play an important part, and its part here is in the in- fluence which it has upon the delusions of the insane. Constant familiarity with the wonders wrought by electricity — the telephone, the telegraph, and the electric motor — has, until recently, produced in the ordinary mind a certain degree of indifference. It is by no means uncommon, however, for the paranoiac to seize upon these wonderful powers and to twist them into the fabric of his delusions. Angels and devils rarely enter our asylums to-day, but, instead, the asylum walls are filled with wires which carry the thoughts of the paranoiac to his persecutors, and their threats to him, and which bring mysterious electrical 1 Read before the Boston Society for Medical Improvement, Feb- ruary 24,1890.