The Wonderful Oscillator

Great are the wonders of electricity. It has so mystified science, so revolutionized industry and so upset all preconceived ideas of the possible that one is prepared to accept even the wildest prognostications regarding what yet is to be accomplished through the aid of the mysterious fluid. One scarcely ceases to wonder over some new marvel in things electric before something newer and still more marvelous is presented, and so the human mind ever is looking for fresh discoveries, and it takes a big one to secure more than a moment’s attention.

But Nikola Tesla, Edison’s twin wizard in matters electrical, at last has struck the direct road to imperishable glory and honor. If the half that is claimed for his latest invention proves true, when rewards are passed around his will not be a tin halo. The only thing to be regretted in connection with his latest achievement is that it will throw many deserving men out of business. But in the crowded state of the ladder of fame it is impossible to reach the top without forcing some one from the rungs, and the majority of people will believe that Tesla has been wise in his selection of victims. It is the doctors who must make way for the electrician’s ascent. These are to find their occupation gone, but it is believed that their large heartedness will enable them to rejoice with the rest of mankind over the glorious times Tesla has in store for all humanity.

The apparatus upon which Tesla stakes his application for the gratitude of mankind is designed to cure all forms of organic disease. His name for the device is the oscillator, and it is supposed to effect cures by a thorough shaking up of the human system, working through a series of electro-mechanical vibrations. The shaking up it gives is mild yet thorough, and when it begins to get in its work, disease folds its tent like an Arab and silently steals away. Bacilli, streptococci, ascococci, diplococci, microbes, germs and all the rest of the deadly family turn tail and run like a dog involuntarily attached to an ex-tomato can. It matters not whether they are chromogenic, zymogenic, or pathogenic; whether they can withstand cold or heat, or are indifferent to all the drugs in the pharmacopoeia. When Tesla touches the button they recognize that it is time for them to take a rest, skip out, skedaddle, vamoose, run, fly or swim.

That is the kind of a machine the Tesla oscillator is. In all-around virtue and efficacy it knocks the spots off any patent medicine which takes less than a two-column space for its advertisement. The electro-mechanical vibrator has no wings at all, but it gets there just the same, and when it arrives it obstinately refuses to associate with anything except health. It is thoroughly up on the pedigrees of all the most fashionable as well as the most common diseases, and it is more radical in its judgment of worthy ancestry than the Society of Colonial Dames. Even nervous prostration, that most aristocratic of afflictions, is set down by the oscillator in the same class with a vulgar stomach-ache, and ennui is allowed no points of superiority over a torpid liver.

The principle upon which the oscillator is constructed was announced by Tesla several years ago. An Austrian scientist grasped it and in a crude way put it to practical use. Later he communicated with the electrician, declaring that he had tried it with wonderful success, even in cases of consumption. Tesla has not experimented with that disease, but from the observation of the Austrian he is confident that the much dreaded ailment is as powerless as are all other ills when brought into contact with the oscillator.

The thought which first occurred to Tesla was that most physicians prescribe exercise for the relief of many diseases. Coupling with this the value of electricity as a remedial agent, the inventor put his wits at work and evolved the oscillator. The machine does its work by means of a series of slight but effective electric shocks, which come at the rate of about 100 a second. In a half a minute the patient receives as much benefit as he would derive from a day on horseback supplemented with a period of electrical treatment. At the same time the danger of over-exertion is avoided. It is reported that the other day ex-Mayor Abram S. Hewitt dropped into Tesla’s laboratory in New York, and incidentally mentioned that his liver was a little off and refused to respond to persistent treatment. Tesla placed him on the oscillator, turned on the current, and in a minute or so had banished the ex-mayor’s ill.

Such is the boon which Tesla is about to spring upon unsuspecting humanity. But he is modest in his claims, and therefore does not mention half the good things it will accomplish. Just think, however, what it means for the lame, the halt, the blind and the lazy. Does the housed-up cripple wish the tonic effects of a hundred-mile spin on a bicycle? All he has to do is to mount the oscillator and push the button. Does the lazy man wish without exertion to knock the surplus fat off his biceps? Put him on the electro-mechanical vibrator and give him in two minutes the equivalent of a month’s work in the cornfield. Does the busy man of affairs long for a canter in the country? Put an oscillator in place of the chair at his desk, and while he lays plans for a new government bond syndicate give him the full value of two hours on a Kentucky thoroughbred. Does the minister weary of preaching to his flock and begin to hint at a purse for a tour of Europe? Stand him on the oscillator, and while he paints the delights of the hereafter compared with the here, let him be treated to benefits far surpassing those to be found in Paris, Rome, Egypt or the Holy Land.

But speaking of preachers suggests the idea that, with a little modification, the oscillator might be made to cure moral as well as physical ills. A device powerful enough to rid a man of insidious bacilli ought to have no great trouble in also shaking the devil out of him. So it may come in the course of time that the preacher will join the doctor in innocuous desuetude and all mankind will be kept good and virtuous and true by periodical association with the great moral electro-mechanical vibrator. Then the prison labor problem will be solved, for all who lapse from the straight and narrow path will be given in five minutes more reformative influence than now is drummed into them by a term of life imprisonment.

Great are the possibilities of the oscillator. Now let some one devise a plan for accompanying the exercise of the oscillator with the sights and sounds and smells incident to the actual experience of those who have sought health in the old way. When it becomes possible to get an oscillator horseback ride to the accompaniment of the odor of new mown hay and freshly turned sod, the lowing of the kine, the bleating of the lambs and the classic utterances of the ploughboy; when one can mount the vibrator and take a trip across the seas, and at the same time catch a whiff of the salty breeze and receive in eye and nose the sights and odors of sunny Italy or the Nile; then will the millennium dawn, and mankind begin to reap the full benefit of Tesla’s genius. If Edison has not lost his electric grip, these agreeable accompaniments to the oscillator will materialize within a twelvemonth.

Let every one try to keep the upper hand of the microbes until the wizards perfect the electric universal benefactor.