Note 5 — LECTURE I. ELECTRICAL INSTRUMENTS.

So long ago as 1870, I was in the habit (at the suggestion of Dr. Radcliffe) of employing at an Institution for Resident Patients, a method of “charging” a patient which I believe to be unique.

|Unique method of charging a patient.|

During dry summer weather the patient reclined upon a couch in the gardens insulated by glass supports, and a sort of lightning conductor was improvised by attaching a 30-feet salmon-rod to the foot of the couch, a piece of ordinary “telegraph wire” being carried up the rod, its insulation being removed from about a foot which projected above the top of the rod.

Upon a fairly warm and dry day the patient became “charged” and sparks could be drawn from him as from a patient in ordinary connection with a Franklinic machine in rotation.

Upon more than one occasion in those ancient Static days, an attempt was made to insulate a patient for a whole night, and to maintain the charge by a relay of “rotating nurses;” but the human machines failed, and suitable gas engines were not then available; hence the procedure related above was, if conducted for three or four hours on a dry summer afternoon, a by no means bad substitute for a close room and a rotating Static machine. In New York, in winter, when the rooms are covered with thick carpets, and when the atmosphere is dry, it has been known that on shaking hands with a visitor, not only has the “shock,” which under similar circumstances occasionally occurs in England, been felt, but that a spark has passed; and children have been known to slide over the carpet towards each other and exchange sparks by way of sport. The influence of atmospheric and other ordinary electrical conditions has been far too little studied by electro-therapeutists.