Magnetine, or, The application of magnetism to the cure & alleviation of diseas.

  • Darlow & Co.
Date:
[1876?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Magnetine, or, The application of magnetism to the cure & alleviation of diseas. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    traction .... The electro-motive force of a muscle increases with its length.’^ Mammifers have the greatest electro¬ motive force of muscles; fish and amphibia have the longest duration of this force after death. Any cause that influences muscles influences also their electro-motive force. An instantaneous discharge takes place in a muscle during contraction. (See Philosophical Transactions^ 1857, pages 129-143.) Dr. Shettle, of Reading, Physician to the Royal Berk¬ shire Hospital, in his excellent pamphlet on “The Nature of the Vital Force, shown from the growth of the Body and the laws regulating the Electro-Magnetic Force,” referring to the mode in which magnetism is obtained by the bloody says: “ One of the chief characteristics of arterial blood is that it contains a large amount of oxygen. Now oxygen is one of the most powerful mag¬ netic bodies known, and acts the same part to the atmosphere that iron does to the earth; but it must be remembered that in this case we are not dealing with oxygen simply, but with oxygen in its allotropic condition of ozone— that is the state of its greatest density and the state in which its magnetic and electro-negative characteristics are most marked—so that we do not hesitate in coming to the conclusion that arterial blood must, by its ab¬ sorption of oxygen, be rendered magnetic. Acting upon this opinion, and notwithstanding that the late Professor Faraday Lad stated that fresh blood was diamagnetic, I deemed it expedient to find out whether arterial and venous blood did not differ in this physical respect. I consequently allowed arterial blood to flow through a tube, which tube had been previously tested between the poles of an electro-magnet, and found to be slightly dia¬ magnetic, and then (whilst the blood was flowing through) secured the blood in the tube. The tube was next suspended as soon as possible be¬ tween the poles of the same electro-magnet. The result was conclusive and most marked. The tube was then removed, and after a while suspended again, when it was found to be decidedly magnetic. The blood was next removed and the tube washed, and upon being suspended again, it was found to have resumed its diamagnetic properties.” The following extract from a lecture on “ The Cause and Phenomena of Death by Lightning,” delivered by Dr. B. W. Richardson, F.R.S., at the Royal Polytechnic Institu¬ tion, is important as showing that the blood is the best conductor of electric currents in the human body: “ The last question on which I touch to-day relates to the conduction of the electrical or lightning current through its structures when the body