Brain Power and Electricity

The effects which electricity has produced upon the human life on this planet are stupendous, but, so far, that effect has had to do wholly with material things. Now comes Nikola Tesla, that man of eccentric brilliancy, and offers us the use of electricity for the brightening up of dull pupils — a sort of mental scouring, as it were!

In Stockholm two sets of school children have been experimented on by the Tesla method, which is to run a number of insulated cable wires through the walls of the schoolroom. By means of an arc coil and a motor a high frequency current of millions of volts are generated, and the air of the room is completely saturated with infinitesimal electric waves vibrating at high speed.

The results obtained by this astonishing process are thus set forth by Prof. Svante Arrhenius: The one set of children, who were not in the magnetized room, were measured, in all possible ways against the set which studied and recited in the magnetized room. The test covered a period of six months. The unmagnetized children grew one and one-quarter inches, while the magnetized children grew two inches. The per cent of the unmagnetized was seventy-five per cent, as against ninety-two of the magnetized. The “test” children were more attentive and less fatigued, and the teachers claimed to be greatly assisted in their labors, as well.

Professor W. C. Bagley of the department of psychology in the University of Illinois is of the opinion that such a process, while affording temporary stimulation, might result in eventual exhaustion. He believes that years of experimentation would be necessary before such methods would be safe to use, generally. Sir Oliver Lodge, however, is strongly in favor of it, and points out that it is merely the equivalent to a mental fertilisation — a principle which long ago won success in agricultural fields.

It is a long established theory of physics that every stimulation produces a corresponding reaction, and to the whole theory of the conservation of energy there has been, according to Lord Kelvin, only one, save radium, known.

But if it should be a success, then we shall at last be able to save our human waste product, the most precious, as it is the most enormous of all waste.