Notes from Gotham - Edison's New Discovery

Thomas A. Edison is undoubtedly a great man. His capacity for reaching results, once he gets on the track of a new discovery, partakes in many respects of the marvellous. He has succeeded in capping Roentgen’s remarkable discovery of the photographic possibilities of the “X” ray of the electric light by the discovery that the human eye is more effective than the camera as a medium for the use of the “X” ray. Edison has now perfected his invention so that he has no difficulty whatever in seeing through the human anatomy or through solid objects like boards. It is all done by the use of a simple screen. Scientific men regard it as the greatest of Edison’s inventions. To be able to look into the lungs and heart, to examine the bones and arteries, the blood vessels and muscles, will be of incalculable advantage to the medical profession. In many respects it will result in the banishment of disease, as it is well known that practically all diseases are curable if taken in time. In the coming years the physician will be enabled to have a perfect knowledge of the condition of the organs of his patients from babyhood up, and thus will be always ready to crush disease, whether hereditary or acquired, in its incipient state. In one respect, then, the millennium does not seem to be so far off. Great is Edison.

The patent medicine men of all kinds are quick to take advantage of new inventions. The uses they are making of Roentgen’s invention for advertising purposes is charming as a display of temerity and enterprise. A number of specialists seem also to have caught at Tesla’s idea that the electric current can be used to convey medicaments to diseased parts of the body. These gentlemen claim to have discovered a new thing in electro-therapeutics, which they call Kataphoresis. According to this theory, rheumatism, neuralgia and kindred diseases will be cured hereafter by the injection of medicine into the affected part with the aid of the electric current. The operator has an ordinary medical battery, to which is connected the usual positive and negative wires. To the negative wire, as shown in the illustration, is connected a large flat sponge covering a plate of zinc. The other wire is connected with a small galvano-hypodermic syringe. This syringe may contain any drug suitable to the disease. The patient is insulated, with the sponge applied to the foot and saturated with starch water, and the operator inserts the needle of the syringe in the shoulder and injects the medicine. Experiments show, from the chemical reaction, that the medicine is carried in a few moments completely through the system, so as to discolor the starch water in the sponge. This seems quite as original an experiment as Tesla’s endeavor to drive medicine into the system through the power of the “X” ray.