Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 84, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 June 1903 — Electric Anesthesia. [ARTICLE]

Electric Anesthesia.

A French investigator has been experimenting with the electric current to produce anesthesia. After duly fortifying himself with n number of experiments upon animals he extended his researches to the human body, experimenting at first upon himself. He finds by applying a current, the exact character of which is not stated, to the body, through moistened electrodes, placed one on the forehead and the other over the small of the back, that with a voltage of fifty complete inhibition takes place. The faculty of speech Is first lost, followed finally by the inhibition of the functions of the other motor senses. It is asserted that its only disagreeable feature is that which accompanies the gradual loss of the faculties, resulting in a sensation of a nightmare. The heart is said to bo unaffected, but the breathing is somewhat obstructed. The current strength is gradually applied, about five minutes being occupied in reaching the the current is switched off the subject awakens at once and with a “feeling of iuvigoration.”