Tesla's Lightning to Free Man from Disease

Astounding Possibilities of Electricity in Medicine and Surgery - Current That Melts Iron Harmless in the Human System

“How to use tremendous electrical forces, freeing us from microbes and disease,” is the latest marvel of science.

Tesla has made some astonishing discoveries. He is able to shoot millions and tens of millions of volts of real thunder storm lightning through a man, that will melt glass and fuse metals, and yet give him no injury or pain.

More wonderful still is that all this mighty force which a human being can withstand will destroy microbic life and disease germs within, making one’s system as clean and sweet as atmosphere after a thunder storm.

In view of these facts electro-medical scientists have shown great interest in Tesla’s experiments with his machines for generating electricity that welds iron, tears steel bars to fragments, and yet plays harmlessly through the human system, creating new health and life for the microbe poisoned victim.

Tesla Rushing His Inventions

A remarkable feature of it all is that Tesla has no patents to sell for manufacturing medicinal lightning, and he has no agents selling his all healing volts to the public.

He is working on a far loftier plane of achievement. He is pushing to completion his startling inventions for propelling and steering torpedo boats, war ships or any other kind of craft at a distance from land, with no person on board nor any connection by wire. He is also perfecting his machine for transmitting power from Niagara Falls to Paris or any other part of the world without a wire, by means of his electro-automatic instruments - each in perfect sympathy and unison with the other, so that electric currents leap across the intervening space of one, or many thousands of miles.

Tesla’s marvellous problems have now been solved, it is said, and he has only to perfect the necessary appliances to present them to the world in practical working form.

To this end a double force of skilled men are now engaged and the machines are being pushed with unceasing rapidity to completion.

Among the many discoveries made by Tesla none is mere impressive than the fact that with a small volume of electricity he secures tremendous results.

How is it done?

By the velocity of the electrical explosions in his marvellous machine known as the condenser.

What giant can drive a hard wax candle into wood with blows from a hammer? But a boy can shoot a soft tallow dip through an oak plank with a shotgun. The powder gives the candle velocity.

A frontier teamster can split a board with his ox whip, which his child plays with and finds harmless. Sand blown from a powerful air blast machine cuts glass and steel like butter. Big steel rails are cut with a soft iron disc.

With the water that falls in gentle dew on the rose garden, the hydraulic miner in California beats down hills and mountains, because of the force - velocity - behind the water.

With his oscillator and condenser, Tesla says he sends waves of electricity through space with a force that makes dynamite a child’s toy by comparison.

Of the dread thunderbolts that devastate forests and shatter the mountain’s crest he says:

“I believe that often not more than three horse power of energy is in the lightning stroke that rends the oak or splits down cliffs of granite. It is the velocity of explosion that gives the electric current its awful force.

“My oscillator sets up a vibration of electricity that is felt in every part of the world, and yet its terrific force is scarcely perceptible to man.”

Tesla has been criticised severely by unthinking scientists, yet his invention of the “rotating magnetic field motor” has made those mighty machines at Niagara Falls possible. They light the city of Buffalo, twenty miles away and run its street cars and the machinery of a thousand factories. Tesla’s name in big letters of bronze cast on the plates of these world famed machines is a fitting monument to his genius.

His achievement in obtaining instantaneous force encircling the globe, omnipotent and everywhere present, borders on the miraculous - the infinite.

Tesla makes the unseen a visible, terrible manifestation in nature. He generates currents that would not disturb a fly on your sleeping babe, yet they are as devastating as a cyclone. He gives the faintest whispering current force - a force that disintegrates armor plate as quickly as you melt sugar with water.

In a way, he brings certainty out of chaos. He makes substance from “nothing.” That which you can neither see, taste, hear nor smell, he lashes into a storm of fury, and you hear this “nothing” roar and thunder like Niagara. It suggests to the contemplative mind that period when this great rolling globe of ours was “without form and void.”

It suggests the phenomena of the original creation of matter made visible to man - the power of making substance out of thought, of thinking “nothing” into substance, and perhaps the life principle itself. In this direction, toward this great end, science seems certainly drifting.

In one sense It may be said that the only sure thing to-day, the only thing that can be predicted with unfailing accuracy is that which no man has seen with his naked eye nor touched, nor heard, nor tasted with his lips - the star which no one has beheld, but which science has already catalogued and which will appear next year or next century to the hour and minute.

Who dares stake his life on the sure arrival of to-morrow’s five o’clock express at that hour? Yet all the world knows that tomorrow’s eclipse will arrive on time to the second.

Working Toward Infinite Possibilities

It is along these omnipotent, infallible lines of science that Tesla is apparently working.

Now to go hack to his views on the use of electricity for disease.

Tesla has been before the highest scientific body of its kind in the country with his discovery. His address to the Electro-Therapeutic Association regarding the use of electricity by physicians in healing wounds and curing disease is soon to be published by the society.

In his carefully prepared paper he makes these interesting statements: - “The body of a person may be subjected without danger to electrical pressures vastly in excess of any producible by ordinary apparatus, for they may amount to several million volts, as has been shown in actual practice.

“Now, when a conducting body is electrified to so high a degree small particles, which may be adhering firmly to its surface, are torn off with violence and thrown to distances which can only be conjectured.

“The continuous improvement of the instruments and the study of the phenomenon may shortly lead to the establishment of a novel mode of hygienic treatment which would permit an instantaneous cleaning of the skin of a person, simply by connecting the same to, or possibly, by merely placing the person in the vicinity of a source of intense electrical oscillations, this having the effect of throwing off, in a twinkle of the eye, dust or particles of any extraneous matter adhering to the body.”

Of his experiments Tesla says:

“Soon my efforts were centred upon producing in a small space the most intense inductive action, and by gradual improvement in the apparatus I obtained results of a surprising character.

“For instance, when the end of a heavy bar of iron was thrust within a loop powerfully energized, a few moments were sufficient to raise the bar to a high temperature.

Wonders of His Electricity

“Even heavy lumps of other metals were heated as rapidly as though they were placed in a furnace.

“When a continuous band formed of a sheet of tin was thrust into the loop the metal was fused instantly, the action being comparable to an explosion, and no wonder, for the frictional losses accumulated in it at the rate of possibly ten horse power.

“Masses of poorly conducting material behaved-similarly, and when a highly exhausted bulb was pushed into the loop the glass was heated in a few seconds nearly to the point of melting.

“When I first observed these astonishing actions I was interested to study their effects upon living tissues.

“As may be assumed, I proceeded with all the necessary caution, and well I might, for I had the evidence that in a turn of only a few inches in diameter an electromotive force of more than ten thousand volts was produced, and such high pressure would be more than sufficient to generate destructive currents in the tissue.

“This appeared all the more certain as bodies of comparatively poor conductivity were rapidly heated and even partially destroyed.

“One may imagine my astonishment 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.

“On more than one occasion, impelled by a desire to make some novel and useful observation, I have willingly or unconsciously performed an experiment connected with some risk, this being scarcely avoidable in laboratory experience.

“Now, why is it that in a space in which such violent turmoil is going on living tissue remains uninjured?

“One might say the currents cannot pass because of the great self-induction offered by the large conducting mass. But this it cannot be, because a mass of metal offers a still higher self-induction and is heated just the same.

“One might argue the tissues offer too great a resistance. But this, again, cannot be the reason, for all evidence shows that the tissues conduct well enough, and besides, bodies of approximately the same resistance are raised to a high temperature.

“One might attribute the apparent harmlessness of the oscillations to the high specific heat of the tissue, but even a rough quantitative estimate from experiments with other bodies shows that this view is untenable.

Human Tissues Are “Condensers”

“The only plausible explanation I have so far found is that the tissues are condensers. This only can account for the absence of injurious action.

“But it is remarkable that, as soon as a heterogeneous circuit is constituted, as by taking in the hands a bar of metal and forming a closed loop in this manner, the passage of the currents through the arms is felt, and other physiological effects are distinctly noted.

“The strongest action is, of course, secured when the exciting loop makes only one turn, unless the connections take up a considerable portion of the total length of the circuit, in which case the experimenter should settle upon the least number of turns by carefully estimating what he loses by increasing the number of turns, and what he gains by utilizing thus a greater proportion of the total length of the circuit.

“It should be borne in mind that when the exciting coil has a considerable number of turns and is of some length, the effects of electrostatic induction may preponderate, as there may exist a very great difference of potential - a hundred thousand volts or more - between the first and last turn. However, these latter effects are always present even when a single turn is employed.

“When a person is placed within such a loop any pieces of metal, though of small bulk, are perceptibly warmed. Without doubt they would be also heated - particularly if they were of iron - when imbedded in living tissue, and this suggests the possibility of surgical treatment by this method.

To Sterilize Wounds Possible

“It might be possible to sterilize wounds, or to locate, or even to extract metallic objects, or to perform other operations of this kind within the sphere of the surgeon’s duties in this novel manner.

“Most of the results enumerated, and many others still more remarkable, are made possible only by utilizing the discharges of a condenser.

“It is probable that but a very few - even among those who are working in these identical fields - fully appreciate what a wonderful instrument such a condenser is in reality. Let me convey an idea to this effect.

“One may take a condenser, small enough to go in one’s vest pocket, and by skillfully using it he may create an electrical pressure vastly in excess - a hundred times greater, if necessary - than any producible by the largest static machine ever constructed.

“Or he may take the same condenser, and, using it in a different way, he may obtain from it currents against which those of the most powerful welding machine are utterly insignificant.

“Or, again, he may avail, himself of the same marvellous instrument, and by suddenly discharging its stored electricity, he may create such a terrific commotion in the space that, though silent and invisible, it can be detected, as actually demonstrated, at distances much greater than those at which the sound of the largest gun is perceptible, distances which are measured in tens, perhaps hundreds, and even thousands, of miles.

“Those who are imbued with popular notions as to the pressures of static machines and currents obtainable with a commercial transformer will be astonished at this statement - yet the truth of it is easy to see.

His Method of Storing Electrical Force

“Such results arc obtainable, and easily, because the condenser can discharge the stored energy in an inconceivably short time. Nothing like this property is known in physical science.

“A compressed spring, a storage battery, or any other form of device capable of storing energy, cannot do this; if they could, things undreamed of at present might be accomplished by their means.

“The nearest approach to a charged condenser is a high explosive, as dynamite. But even the most violent explosion of such a compound bears no comparison with the discharge or explosion of a condenser.

“For while the pressures that are produced in the detonation of a chemical compound are measured in tens of tons per square inch, those which may be caused by condenser discharges may amount to thousands of tons per square inch, and if a chemical could be made which would explode as quickly as a condenser can be discharged under conditions which are realizable an ounce of it would quite certainly he sufficient to render useless the largest battle ship.

“That important realizations would follow from the use of an instrument possessing such ideal properties I have been convinced since long ago, but I also recognized early that great difficulties would have to be overcome before it could replace less perfect implements now used in the arts for the manifold transformations of electrical energy.

“These difficulties were many. The condensers themselves, as usually manufactured, were inefficient, the conductors wasteful, the best insulation inadequate, and the conditions for the most efficient conversion were hard to adjust and to maintain.

Problem of Controlling Electricity

“One difficulty, however, which was more serious than others, and to which I called attention when I first described this system of energy transformation, was found in the devices necessarily used for controlling the charges and discharges of the condenser.

“They were wanting in efficiency and reliability, and threatened to prove a decided drawback, greatly restricting the use of the system and depriving it of many valuable features.

“For a number of years I have tried to master this difficulty. During this time a great number of such devices were experimented upon. Many of them promised well at first only to prove inadequate in the end.

“Reluctantly, I came back upon an idea on which I had worked long before. It was to replace the ordinary brushes and commutator segments by fluid contacts. I had encountered difficulties then, but the intervening years in the laboratory were not spent in vain, and I made headway.

“First it was necessary to provide for a circulation of the fluid, but forcing it through by a pump proved itself impractical.

“Then the happy idea presented itself to make the pumping device an integral part of the circuit interrupter, enclosing both in a receptacle to prevent oxidation.

“Next some simple ways of maintaining the circulation, as by rotating a body of mercury, presented themselves. Then I learned how to reduce the wear and losses which still existed. I fear that these statements indicating how much effort was spent in these seemingly insignificant details will not convey a high idea of my ability, but I confess that my patience was taxed to the utmost.

Success for the Physician of Science

Finally, though, I had the satisfaction of producing devices which are simple and reliable in their operation, which require practically no attention, and which are capable of effecting a transformation of considerable amounts of energy with fair economy.

“The physician will not be able to obtain an instrument suitable to fulfil many requirements. He will be able to use it in electro-therapeutic treatment in most of the ways enumerated. He will have the facility of providing himself with coils such as he may desire to have for any particular purpose, which will give him any current or any pressure he may wish to obtain.

“Such coils win consist of but a few turns of wire, and the expense of preparing them will be quite insignificant.

“The instrument will also enable him to generate Röntgen rays of much greater power than obtainable with ordinary apparatus.

“A tube must still be furnished by the manufacturers which will not deteriorate, and which will allow to concentrate larger amounts of energy upon the electrodes.

“When this is done nothing win stand in the way of an extensive and efficient application of this beautiful discovery, which must ultimately prove Itself of the highest value, not only at the hands of the surgeon, but also of the electrotherapist, and, what is most Important, of the bacteriologist.”

“The first sod simplest method of applying the currents was to connect the body of the patient to two points of the generator, be it a dynamo or an induction coil. The alternator may be one giving from five to ten thousand complete vibrations per second, this number being still within the limit of practicability.”