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Galvanic Reanimation (Applying Electricity To The Dead)

Mighty_Emperor

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Transplanted from the Robert Cornish thread ...

[See Also:] this galvanic reanimation from the early 1800s:
http://www.lateralscience.co.uk/ymboa/galvreanim.html

Caption from the linked webpage:
The above article is an account of experiments carried out upon the corpse of Matthew Clydesdale at the Glasgow University anatomy theatre by Dr. Ure and Prof. Jeffray on the 4th november 1818. The galvanic reanimation was performed in public, as had Mr. Clydesdale`s hanging, for murder. It is of note that Mary Shelley`s novel "Frankenstein" was published earlier in the same year.

See Also - this overview of the experimental demonstration described in the article above:

http://www.lateralscience.co.uk/reanim/galvreanim2.html

... which includes the following contemporary image:

galvreanim.jpg
 
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Emperor said:
Like this galvanic reanimation from the early 1800s:
http://www.lateralscience.co.uk/ymboa/galvreanim.html

And Mark Pilkington discussed this kind of subject in last Thursday's Garudian:

Sparks of life

Mark Pilkington
Thursday October 7, 2004
The Guardian

In January 1803, the body of the murderer George Forster was pulled from the gallows of Newgate Prison in London and taken to the Royal College of Surgeons. There, before an audience of doctors and curiosity-seekers, Giovanni Aldini, nephew of the late Luigi Galvani, prepared to return the corpse to life.

At least, that is what some of the spectators thought they were witnessing. When Aldini applied conducting rods, connected to a large battery, to Forster's face, "the jaw began to quiver, the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and the left eye actually opened". The climax of the performance came as Aldini probed Forster's rectum, causing his clenched fist to punch the air, as if in fury, his legs to kick and his back to arch violently.

Aldini's was one of many such experiments on corpses. He and other "galvanists" were continuing the research of the late University of Bologna anatomist who, a decade previously, had demonstrated the effects of electrical current on frogs' nervous systems. In line with late 18th century "vitalist" ideas about a life force, Galvani proposed the existence of "animal electricity". This electrical juice, he suggested, was generated in the brain, flowing through the nerves and supplying muscles with power.

Although a great proponent of electricity's medical potential - it was used to treat paralysis, rheumatism, as a purgative and to revive drowned people - Aldini admitted that he was unable to restart a heart.

Others were less modest, including Carl August Weinhold, a German scientist who claimed to have brought animals back from the dead. In a series of experiments, Weinhold extracted the spinal cords of decapitated kittens, replacing them with zinc and sliver pile batteries, which generated an electrical charge. Not only did their hearts start beating but, according to Weinhold, the kittens bounded around for several minutes.

Weinhold would later propose enforced genital infibulation for all young men, an idea received with less enthusiasm than his prancing zombie kittens.

The electrifying demonstrations of Aldini, Weinhold and others contributed much to our understanding of physiology and electricity. Perhaps their greatest claim to fame was inspiring Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), the book that forever shaped the popular image of the mad scientist.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/farout/story/0,,1320888,00.html

I'm putting "prancing zombie kitten" down on my Xmas list when I send my letter to Santa.
 
The Re-Animation Chair

Great work so far on finding cool links, Emperor - here's another!

http://www.thebakken.org/artifacts/re-animation.htm

The stimulating effects of electricity were noticed early in the investigation of the subject. Galvanic electricity was discovered in the twitching of frog muscles, and the Voltaic Pile used to create a simulacrum of the electric eel. There was a strong association between galvanism and "animal electricity."

Reece's book is contemporaneous with Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (London, 1818). They share a common interest: restoration of life where death has apparently taken hold. And they share a common opinion, that galvanism is one of the stronger weapons in the fight against death. (In context, Frankenstein can be seen as an early form of science fiction.)

The "reanimation chair" of Dr. De Sanctis, described in The Medical Guide, has three pertinent features: a bellows to give forced ventilation; a metallic tube to be inserted in the esophagus; and a voltaic pile attached at one pole to the esophageal tube, and at the other to an electrode. This electrode was to be successively touched to "the regions of the heart, the diaphragm and the stomach ...". De Sanctis and Reece were recommending cardiac electrostimulation by way of esophageal and precordial electrodes; and if the electrode were to be touched at perhaps one contact per second, a form of manually regulated pacing to boot.

It is hard to estimate the voltage of early piles; but a pile of "one hundred plates" would probably have an output somewhere in the vicinity of 20 to 100 volts. This, coincidentally, overlaps the voltage range found effective by Shafiroff and Linder in their 1956 study of esophageal stimulation of the heart. Quoting Schechter's analysis of their results,

"Withal, control of rhythm was obtained. To do this, however, the voltage had to be between 20 and 50; and above 60 volts, chest pain and diaphragmatic flutter became intolerable."

And here is a link to Edison and the Electric Chair:

http://www.edisonandtheelectricchair.com/chapter.php

Edison’ s electric light inventions marked another triumph in the great tradition of electrical innovation that included Volta’s battery, Faraday’s researches in electromagnetism, Morse’s telegraph, and the first powerful electrical generators built in the 1870s. In the shadows of this march of progress, however, a very different electrical tradition survived. In the eighteenth century electricity had served primarily as a source of amusement and a form of medicine, and those uses persisted into the nineteenth century. The mysterious fluid that carried telegraph messages and produced light also was sent coursing through the bodies of animals and humans for the purpose of entertaining, healing, and killing.

Physicians in the 1740s had discovered that some people who appeared to be dead could be revived by forcing air into their lungs. Suddenly, the boundary between death and life became blurred, and doctors began to distrust their ability to diagnose death. In the 1760s these doubts inspired the creation of the first “humane societies,” organizations dedicated not to the welfare of animals but to reviving the apparently dead. Resuscitation techniques included not only assisted breathing but also vigorous shakes and thumps that were intended to get the blood moving again. The revivalists did not trouble themselves with those who expired after long illness; they focused, rather, on those felled by the sudden misfortune of drowning, suffocation, or lightning strikes. Hoping to learn how to revive lightning’s victims, the English experimenter and radical democrat Joseph Priestley used a large Leyden jar to kill a mouse, a rat, “a pretty large kitten,” and a dog in the 1760s. He then tried to reanimate his victims by blowing into their lungs through a quill. The attempts failed, and he stopped the experiments, judging that “it is paying dear for philosophical discoveries, to purchase them at the expence of humanity.”1

Others thought electricity might help bring back those who had died from some other means. One experimenter revived a suffocated dog with electricity in 1755, and twenty years later another claimed to have shocked a drowned man back to life. The invention of the chemical battery opened new avenues of experimentation. Giovanni Aldini, nephew of Luigi Galvani, staged experiments to determine the value of electricity as a means of resuscitation in cases of asphyxiation. A strong current sent through a dead ox produced such a failing of limbs that “several of the spectators were much alarmed, and thought it prudent to retire to some distance.” Before London’s Royal Society in 1803, Aldini conducted experiments on the body of a freshly hanged criminal. When the poles were touched to the jaw and ear, the face quivered and the left eye opened, while a shock from ear to rectum produced a reaction so strong as “almost to give an appearance of reanimation.” Aldini concluded that “Galvanism affords very powerful means of resuscitation.”2
 
Frog with Implanted Webserver

Garnet Hertz - Experiments in Galvanism: Frog with Implanted Webserver
Experiments in Galvanism is the culmination of studio and gallery experiments in which a miniature computer is implanted into the dead body of a frog specimen. Akin to Damien Hirst's bodies in formaldehyde, the frog is suspended in clear liquid contained in a glass cube, with a blue ethernet cable leading into its splayed abdomen. The computer stores a website that enables users to trigger physical movement in the corpse: the resulting movement can be seen in gallery, and through a live streaming webcamera.[/url]

link (warning! disected frog photos!)
 

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