Electric Current to Kill Bacilli - Nikola Tesla Proposes to Annihilate Disease by Using Millions of Volts

Result, New Lease of Life

How This Tremendous Force Is To Be Generated Has Not Yet Been Revealed

No Insulator For Patients

Even Consumption, It Is Asserted, Will Be Routed by the New Discovery

Nikola Tesla, whose boldness in conceiving astonishing uses to which electricity may be put has given the scientific world surprises from time to time, has a new proposal, and one which will arouse widespread interest and comment.

He now proposes to destroy the bacilli of all diseases by applying millions of volts of electricity to persons afflicted. The tremendous force is to be applied in such a manner that the vital organs will be free from harmful effects and so that the bacilli will be drawn from the system.

The tremendous current which Tesla proposes to apply will not be sent through the body, as in the cases of persons executed by electricity, but will run along the surface.

The new plan for destroying disease germs, including even those of consumption, was outlined recently in an exhaustive paper which the electrician read before the Electro-Therapeutic Society, and created deep interest.

To Use Millions of Volts

It had been supposed that Tesla’s feat in generating a current of fifty thousand volts, announced some time ago, was the limit, but he told me last evening that the cure proposed involved the use of millions of volts, applied in such a manner as not only not to harm the patient but to remove from his system all the bacilli lodged there and renew his store of energy.

The matter became public yesterday, when in despatches from Washington it was announced that a New York lawyer was filing with the patent office the papers necessary to protect the discovery. Mr. Tesla said yesterday that he had applied for no patent and that no one was acting for him in that respect, but he added that the news contained in the Washington despatches was probably based upon new features in the use of electricity of which he treated in the paper he read recently in this city.

Inquiry was made at the patent office by the Herald’s Washington correspondent, and he was told that as yet no patent for any electrical process for germ destroying had been applied for, and that nothing was known of any application for a patent protecting any contrivance intended for such uses.

No Glass Case

Mr. Tesla told me that the Washington accounts of his discovery were incorrect in some particulars. It was said, for instance, that it was proposed to place the patient in a glass case and to apply the tremendous current from without, the glass, not being an absolute non-conductor, serving to permit the application of the current without causing too great a shock and to distribute it so that the repeated charges of static electricity would destroy the various forms of bacilli without injury to the patient. Mr. Tesla said of this description of his process:

“That is wrong, technically. There will be no glass case such as is spoken of. I have no time to go into the matter in detail now, beyond telling you that it is my plan to apply several millions of volts of electricity to the surface of the body and draw out the germs.

“No, death would not follow the use of a current so tremendous. The patient would not be injured, but would receive a new store of energy. I think the reports from Washington are a result of my recent presentation of new features in the use of electricity for the cure of disease.”

Just how Mr. Tesla proposes to generate a force so mighty he did not say. That is his secret. While a current of 1,500 or 1,800 volts suffices to kill a man instantly when applied in a certain way, a vastly greater amount of electricity applied in a manner altogether different, it is explained, may be of beneficial effect, and the patient may became practically a new man as far as his store of vital energy is concerned.

What Other Experts Say

Lack of details concerning the manner in which Mr. Tesla proposes to apply static electricity for curative purposes prevented a discussion of the value of the alleged discovery by medical men yesterday. Dr. Cyrus Edson pointed out that it is physically impossible to make static electricity permeate all parts of the human body, as it does not penetrate beyond the surface. If it did, the germs of disease might be destroyed by it.

Thomas A. Edison, when the matter was brought to his attention, in Orange, N. J., yesterday, said he had applied for no patent in connection with the use of electricity for germ destroying, and knew nothing about the discovery.

Dr. F. S. Kolle, who is in charge of the electro-therapeutic department of the Electrical Engineer Institute, at No. 120 Liberty street, and who has written extensively of the Roentgen discovery and kindred matters, was much interested when told of the discovery of Tesla yesterday. He told me that Tesla and others had produced apparatus that would generate two and a half million volts of electricity, and continued:

“I see no reason why a glass case should be used. Any man can take a million volts direct into his body and not be injured by it, but benefited instead. The reason that 50,000 volts did not kill Tesla when he took that strength of current is that the cells in his body did not have time to contract in response to it. Much less would have killed him instantly. Much more is all the safer.

“It is just such a case as that of a bullet going through a window pane. At high speed it will cut a clean hole and will not crack the glass. The particles have not time to spread during the period of impact.

Why Electricity Is Life

“As to the benefit of so great a current, we say it as a proverb that electricity is life, and the scientific meaning of that saying is that it oxidizes the tissue.

“I have long held the theory, though I have never made it public before, that the renewal of energy and vitality which follows eating long before the three or four hours necessary for ordinary digestion have passed, is directly due to the production of a small electrical current generated by the action of the acid secreted by the stomach’s mucous membrane upon the metallic elements which make up the food ingested.

“The exterior application of an oscillatory current of high frequency would have a similar effect, greater as the current higher, but whether proportionately greater I cannot say. So, therefore, the use of such a current would restore vitality and be an ally and aid to the food taken into the stomach. It could never take the place of food, of course, for, while it could supply oxygen, it could not give the carbo-hydrates necessary to existence . Therefore its use would not diminish the amount of food needed. The person using it, however, would have a greater ability to work and a more brilliant intellectuality.

Would a million volt current kill the bacilli of disease in the body? I do not know. I do not know whether a fifty thousand volt current can do it. I am not aware that any experiments of that kind have been made. But oxidization does kill bacilli of all kinds, and as those currents produce it there is good reason to believe that part of the claim for this discovery. What has not been heretofore known is how much oxidization of tissue will kill bacilli therein. Perhaps that has now been found out. It all seems feasible, except the talk about a glass cage.”