Electrocution of Microbes

Tesla’s recent address before the Electro-Therapeutic Association sets forth some interesting but characteristically vague claims as to the possibilities of electricity — this time in connection with the cure of disease. As in the case of his recent glowing project for transmitting electric power through the air, his new statements must at present be commented upon with an “if.” His experiments and his claims are at any rate full of interest, and if they should lead to any practical application of electricity for the cure of germ diseases they could not fail to be as important as wonderful.

The claim said to be made by Tesla is that he can kill microbes in the human body by means of a powerful electric current without injury or inconvenience to the patient. This idea of shooting a thunderstorm through a microbe-stricken man and leaving his system as clean and fresh as a summer sky after a shower is quite fascinating. It first requires a high degree of certainty, however, on two important points: Can a high voltage really be rendered harmless to the human body, and if so can it then destroy microbes? Mr. Tesla gives some fairly convincing testimony on the first point, but the microbe killing portion of his theory seems as yet to be a mere matter of speculation.

The sum and substance of Tesla’s electro-medical discovery, as far as it has been given to the general public, is this: That one can place his hand or body within a powerful induction coil and receive the effects of electrostatic induction without harm. “One may imagine my astonishment,” says Mr. Tesla, “when I found that I could thrust my hand or any other part of the body within the loop and hold it there with impunity.”

The great public is perfectly willing that Mr. Tesla should experiment on himself with an electro-motor force of a million volts in this wise, and it will give him due credit for such practical discoveries as he may ultimately make along this line. There are, doubtless, valuable therapeutic uses for electricity if it is found that it can be administered by placing the body within a powerfully charged field of inductive force. Mr. Tesla claims that “the body of a person may be subjected without danger to electrical pressures vastly in excess of any producible by ordinary apparatus, for they amount to several million volts, as has been shown in actual practice.”

Admitting this, part of the discovery which is wonderful enough, it still remains extremely doubtful whether a current that is harmless to the tissues could at the same time kill disease germs in the body. The instantaneous cleaning of the skin by placing a person in the vicinity of intense electrical oscillations is a reasonable suggestion made by Mr. Tesla in his address. The further claim that all the microbes in the system can be killed by the same means is apparently made by irresponsible admirers of the inventor rather than by himself, and in any case it is much too sweeping a statement to receive acceptance.