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.

    4/46 (page 2)
    influences to torture and enfeeble him. This influence which electricity has upon the imagination is not, how- ever, confined wholly to the insane. I have mentioned the paranoiac's delusions because we must bear this influence in mind in considering the action of elec- ricity upon the healthy organism. Within the last few years the employment of elec- tricity in the service of mau has undergone a complete change. Instead of the feeble currents of a few volts which suffice for the telephone or the telegraph, powerful currents of hundreds aud thousands of volts are employed for the electric lights aud electric motors. The arc light, which ten years ago was hardly more than a curiosity of the physical laboratory, now illu- minates villages which never knew the vagaries of a gas meter, and electrical trains whir at the rate of fif- teen or twenty miles an hour through the streets of town and city, and even along our country roads. With this increased frequency in the use of strong electric currents, new problems are presented to the phy- sician. Not only are the men employed in caring for the wires and in other electrical work exposed to acci- dents, but the ordinary citizen is not exempt. An electrical company gets permission to put up its wires — a matter usually of no great difficulty — and then it puts them up securely or insecurely as it pleases, no supervision is exercised by the city in regard to the erection of the wires, and no conditions of con- struction are demanded. The wires are put up hur- riedly with our customary American carelessness, and, when they are once up, there is never any subsequent official inspection. The company may, if it chooses, look after them for a time, or the company may go out of existence and its wires are left in the air owner- less and uncared for. What happens? Some day one of these wires, never properly 'insulated and with