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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    the top of a freight-car. It is uncertain whether he lost consciousness, but he was finally picked up by a brakeman and went home. For a week he tried to work,, but. finally he was obliged to give it up. He was very nervous, all broke up, and slept none for three nights. He had a bad burn on the inside of the thigh, and a slight burn on the hand. For a year after his injury he had, at times, pain and a queer swelled feeling in the thigh. Since that time he has been very nervous and has had to give up electric light work; he used to tremble greatly while at work. Ever since his iujury he has slept poorly and has been uervous and shattered, although he is slowly improving. Before his injury he was strong and well, and a good sleeper ; he often took electric shocks, and never saw but one battery that he could not bear ; now electricity breaks him up and he feels nervous and feels the electricity when going near a dynamo. Thunder-storms, how- ever, have no effect. Robert28 reports the case of a man who received a shock in a telephone office from a blind wire. He had clonic muscular spasm, temperature 97° F., res- piration 50, pulse very rapid. He had severe pain in left arm, and later convulsions of that arm and the right leg — a sort of jactitation, suppression of which caused severe pain. This continued three days, the fourth day it became a tremor, and the fifth day it ceased. The manager of the Oakland Electric Light and Motor Company, was measuring the resistance of elec- tric light circuits.'24 Me took hold of two wires, which unknown to him were in a circuit, taking one firmly in each hand to pull them apart. He says, My hands were paralyzed, my arms were as stiff as bars of iron, 2« liobert: St. Louis Courier of Medicine, November, 1886, »* Occidental Medical Tiroes, October, 1889, p, 562,