The Measure of Man: Technologizing the Victorian Body

Verne J. , Around the world in eighty days (Harmondsworth, 1996; first pub. 1873).

Berg M. , The machinery question and the making of political economy (Cambridge, 1980); Rabinbach A. , The human motor: Energy, fatigue and the origins of modernity (Berkeley, Calif., 1990).

Morus I. R. , Frankenstein's children: Electricity, exhibition and experiment in early nineteenth-century London (Princeton, N.J., 1998).

Grove W. R. , “An address on the importance of the study of physical science in medical education”, British medical journal, i (1869), 485–7, p. 486.

McLuhan M. , Understanding media: The extensions of man (New York, 1965), 247.

Marvin C. , When old technologies were new: Thinking about electrical communication in the late nineteenth century (Oxford, 1988) has some similar points to make. See in particular her discussions on pp. 109–51.

[ Wynter A. ], “The electric telegraph”, Quarterly review, xcv (1854), 118–64.

Ure A. , The philosophy of manufactures (London, 1835), especially the remarks on pp. 13–14.

Hughes T. R. , Networks of power: Electrification in Western society, 1880–1930 (Baltimore, 1983); Nye D. E. , Electrifying America: Social meanings of a new technology (Cambridge, Mass., 1990).

Ibid., 6.

Schaffer S. , “Experimenters' techniques, dyers' hands, and the electric planetarium”, Isis, lxxxviii (1997), 456–83.

Morus , op. cit. (ref. 3), 125–52.

Schaffer S. , “A manufactory of Ohms: Late Victorian metrology and its instrumentation”, in Cozzens S. Bud R. (eds), Invisible connexions (Bellingham, 1992), 23–56.

For surrogates and their role in calibration see Collins H. M. , Changing order (London, 1985). This is an aspect of what Collins describes as the experimenter's regress.

Morus I. R. , “Marketing the machine: The construction of electrotherapeutics as viable medicine in early Victorian England”, Medical history, xxxvi (1992), 34–52.

The distinction between “orthodox” and “quack” medicine needs to be approached with some care. The boundary between the two was always contingent, contested and fluid. Activities that might have been considered acceptable by orthodox practitioners in the eighteenth or even early nineteenth centuries for example, were certainly not so by the late nineteenth century. See Porter R. , Health for sale: Quackery in England 1660–1850 (Manchester, 1989); Morus , op. cit. (ref. 15); Winter A. , “The construction of orthodoxies and heterodoxies in early Victorian life sciences”, in Lightman B. (ed.), Victorian science in context (Chicago, 1997), 24–50.

For an overview of the history of electrotherapeutics and its institutional settings see Colwell H. A. , An essay on the history of electrotherapy and diagnosis (London, 1922); Rowbottom M. Susskind C. , Electricity and medicine: History of their interaction (San Francisco, 1984); Senior J. , “Rationalising electrotherapy in neurology, 1860–1920”, D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1994.

Addison T. , “On the influence of electricity, as a remedy in certain convulsive and spasmodic diseases”, Guy's Hospital reports, ii (1837), 493–507, p. 493.

Bird G. , “Report on the value of electricity as a remedial agent in the treatment of diseases”, Guy's Hospital reports, vi (1841), 81–120.

Hughes H. M. , “Digest of one hundred cases of chorea treated in the Hospital”, Guys' Hospital reports, iv (1846), 360–94.

Advertisement for the London Galvanic Hospital, Electrician, v (1863), between pp. 120 and 121.

“The present state of the science of medical electricity”, Electrician, v (1863), 6.

“The march of specialism”, Lancet, 1863, i, 183.

Ibid.

Peterson M. J. , The medical profession in mid-Victorian England (Berkeley, 1978), 244–82, discusses specialization and the attitude towards it of the profession.

Lobb H. , “Special hospitals — The London Galvanic Hospital”, Lancet, 1863, i, 219.

Lobb at least was still active as late as 1877. See Lobb H. , Medical batteries and how to use them (London, 1877).

“Julius Althaus, M.D.”, British medical journal , 1900, i, 1508; “Julius Althaus, M.D. Berlin, M.R.C.P.Lond.”, Lancet , 1900, i, 1763; Feiling A. , A history of the Maida Vale Hospital for Nervous Diseases (London, 1958), 1–17.

Althaus J. , A treatise on medical electricity, theoretical and practical; and its use in the treatment of paralysis, neuralgia, and other diseases (London, 1859; 2nd edn, London, 1870; 3rd edn, London, 1873).

Ibid. (1st edn), 344.

Ibid. (2nd edn), 307–9.

Ibid. (2nd edn), 347–8.

Feiling , op. cit. (ref. 28), 7.

Tibbits H. , A handbook of medical electricity (London, 1873).

Tibbits H. , How to use a galvanic battery in medicine and surgery: A discourse upon electro-therapeutics delivered before the Hunterian Society upon November 8th, 1876 (London, 1877), 1.

Ibid., 5.

Ibid., 21.

Tibbits H. , A handbook of medical and surgical electricity, 2nd edn (London, 1877), 247.

Tibbits H. , Massage and its applications: A concluding lecture delivered to nurses and masseuses in connection with the West-end Hospital for Diseases of the Nervous System, Paralysis and Epilepsy (London, 1887), 6.

Dowse T. S. , The modern treatment of disease by the system of massage (London, 1887), 92.

Steavenson W. E. , “The Electrical Department”, St. Bartholomew's Hospital reports, xix (1883), 235–47, p. 236.

Steavenson W. E. , Electricity and its manner of working in the treatment of disease: A thesis for the M.D. degree of the University of Cambridge (London, 1884).

de Watteville A. , Practical introduction to medical electricity (London, 1884).

Uyeama T. , “Capital, profession and medical technology: The Electro-therapeutic Institutes and the Royal College of Physicians, 1888–1922”, Medical history, xli (1987), 150–81.

“The Institute of Medical Electricity”, undated pamphlet, Silvanus P. Thompson Collection, Institution of Electrical Engineers (SPT116/11).

Membership Certificates, Institution of Electrical Engineers.

Op. cit. (ref. 45).

“The electrified room system”, undated pamphlet, Silvanus P. Thompson Collection, Institution of Electrical Engineers (SPT116/6).

“A visit to the Institute of Medical Electricity”, Electrician, xxiii (1889), 490–2.

Ibid., 492.

Uyeama , op. cit. (ref. 44) deals with this dispute at some length.

Annals of the Royal College of Physicians, xxxv (1888), 175–6, p. 176. Meeting of Censor's Board, 10 April 1888.

See for example Anstie F. E. , Neuralgia and the diseases that resemble it (London, 1871), 202.

Steavenson , op. cit. (ref. 41).

Anstie , op. cit. (ref. 53), 200.

Gooday G. , “Precision measurement and the genesis of physics teaching laboratories in Victorian Britain”, The British journal for the history of science, xxiii (1990), 25–51; idem, “Teaching telegraphy and electrotechnics in the physics laboratory: William Ayrton and the creation of an academic space for electrical engineering, 1873–84”, History of technology, xiii (1991), 73–111; Hunt B. , “The ohm is where the art is: British telegraph engineers and the development of electrical standards”, Osiris, ix (1993), 48–63; Smith C. Wise M. N. , Energy & empire: A biographical study of Lord Kelvin (Cambridge, 1989).

“Electricity in medicine”, Lancet, 1895, ii, 587–8, p. 588.

“Reviews and notices of books”, Lancet, 1871, i, 346.

“Reviews and notices”, British medical journal, 1870, ii, 657.

“Medical electrical nomenclature”, Electrical review, xxxv (1894), 469–70.

For an overview of the history of precision see Wise M. N. (ed.), The values of precision (Princeton, N.J., 1994). For electrical standards in particular see Schaffer S. , “Accurate measurement is an English science”, ibid., 135–72.

Morus , op. cit. (ref. 3), 216; Hunt , op. cit. (ref. 56).

Erb W. , Handbook of electro-therapeutics, transl. by Putzel L. (New York, 1883), 19.

de Watteville A. , Practical introduction to medical electricity, 2nd edn (London, 1884), p. vi.

Ibid., 14.

Ibid., 45.

“Electricity and the medical profession”, Electrical review, x (1882), 173–4, p. 173.

Ibid., 174.

Ibid., 174.

Stone W. H. Kilner W. J. , “On measurement in the medical application of electricity”, Journal of the Society of Telegraph Engineers and of Electricians, xi (1882), 107–28.

Stone was the first individual to be an FRCP and FRCS simultaneously. It had previously been the case that a Fellow of one College would be required to resign on accepting a Fellowship at the other.

Obituaries in the Lancet, 1891, ii, 153; Electrician, xxvii (1891), 299.

Stone Kilner , op. cit. (ref. 70), 109.

Lawrence C. , “Incommunicable knowledge: Science, technology and the clinical art in Britain, 1850–1914”, Journal of contemporary history, xx (1985), 503–20.

Stone W. H. , “The physiological bearing of electricity on health”, Journal of the Society of Telegraph Engineers and Electricians, xiii (1884), 415–36.

Ibid., 433.

For surrogates see Collins , op. cit. (ref. 14), 100–6.

Stone W. H. , “The application of electricity to medical purposes”, Electrical review, xii (1883), 507. Stone's papers are Stone W. H. , “The electrical resistance of the human body”, Electrical review, xii (1883), 508–9; idem, “On the electrical resistance of the human body”, Electrical review, xiii (1883), 376–8; idem, “The electrical resistance of the human body”, Electrical review, xiv (1884), 300–1; idem, “The electrical resistance of the human body”, Electrical review, xv (1884), 62–63.

Stone , “The application of electricity to medical purposes” (ref. 78), 507.

Stone , op. cit. (ref. 77, 1884(i)), 301. The apparatus is described in Kohlrausch F. , “Determination of the resistance of liquid conductors and galvanic batteries and on a universal resistance measurer”, Electrical review, xiv (1884), 24–25.

Stone , op. cit. (ref. 77, 1884(i)), 301.

Stone W. H. , “The electrical conditions of the human body”, Electrician, xvi (1886), 205; idem, “The electrical conditions of the human body”, ibid., 451–3, 478–80 and 501–3.

Lawrence H. Newman Harries A. , “Alternating v. Continuous currents in relation to the human body”, Journal of the Society of Telegraph Engineers and Electricians, xix (1890), 290–316.

Hughes , op. cit. (ref. 9); Wilson J. F. , Ferranti and the British electrical industry, 1864–1930 (Manchester, 1988).

On the domestication of electricity see Marvin , op. cit. (ref. 6).

Lawrence Harries , op. cit. (ref. 83), 293.

Ibid., 301.

Forbes G. , “The physiological effect of current”, Electrical review, xxvi (1890), 392.

Lawrence H. Newman , “The physiological effect of current”, Electrical review, xxvi (1890), 419–20, p. 419.

Sayers H. M. , “Alternate v. Continuous currents in relation to the human body”, Electrician, xxv (1890), 604.

Blathy O. T. , “Alternate v. Continuous currents in relation to the human body”, Electrician, xxv (1890), 629–30, p. 630.

“The physiological effect of electric currents”, Electrician, xxv (1890), 120–1.

Lawrence H. Newman , “Alternating v. Continuous currents in relation to the human body”, Electrician, xxv (1890), 644.

Lawrence H. Newman Harries A. , “Alternating versus continuous currents in relation to the human body”, Electrician, xxv (1890), 640–3.

Ibid., 641.

Lawrence H. Newman , “The human body as a conductor of electricity”, Electrical review, xxxi (1892), 196–8.

Ibid., 198.

Hedley W. S. , The hydro-electric methods in medicine (London, 1892).

Chaney M. , Tesla: Man out of time (New York, 1981); Seifer M. J. , Wizard: The life and times of Nikola Tesla. Biography of a genius (Secaucus, N.J., 1996).

Martin T. C. , The inventions, researches and writings of Nikola Tesla (New York, 1995), 198–293.

Ibid., 200.

Ibid., 200; 201.

“Dr. d'Arsonval's experiments in electro-physiology”, Electrical review, xxxiv (1894), 328–30.

For Gotch see O'Connor W. J. , British physiologists, 1885–1914: A biographical dictionary (Manchester, 1991), 77–79. Lodge describes the collaboration in Lodge O. , Past years: An autobiography (London, 1931), 188–90.

Lodge, Past years (ref. 104), 189–90. See also “Physiology at the British Association”, Nature, 1 (1894), 460–4, p. 463.

Lodge O. , “The work of Hertz”, Proceedings of the Royal Institution, xiv (1893–95), 321–49, pp. 333–4.

Aitken H. G. J. , Syntony and spark: The origins of radio (New York, 1976), 102–24.

Lodge , op. cit. (ref. 106), 339–40. Also “The British Association at Oxford”, Electrician, xxxiii (1894), 456–9, p. 458.

Hedley W. S. , “A theory of nervous conduction”, Lancet, 1898, i, 994–5.

[ Crookes W. ], “Some possibilities of electricity”, Fortnightly review, li (1892), 173–81, p. 176.

Owen A. , The darkened room: Women, power and spiritualism in late Victorian England (London, 1989), 228–30; Noakes R. , “Cranks and visionaries: Science, spiritualism and transgression in Victorian Britain”, PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1998; idem, “Telegraphy is an art occult: Cromwell Fleetwood Varley and the diffusion of electricity to the other world”, The British journal for the history of science, forthcoming.

Hedley W. S. , “Apologia pro electricitate suâ”, Lancet, 1895, i, 1105–9.

Ibid., 1108.

Hedley W. S. , Current from the main: The medical employment of electric lighting currents (London, 1896).

Electrical review, xxii (1888), 79.

“Execution by electricity”, Electrician, xxiii (1889), 288–9, p. 289.

Hughes , op. cit. (ref. 6), 106–9.

See for example Brown H. P. , The comparative danger to life of the alternating and continuous electrical currents (New York, 1889).

Ibid., 27.

“The execution by electricity”, Lancet, 1890, ii, 345–6, p. 345.

Ibid., 346.

Some of the responses are cited in Marvin , op. cit. (ref. 6), 149–50.

“Physiological observations of the McIlvaine electrocution”, Electrical review, xxx (1892), 316.

Thomson W. , “Electrical units of measurement”, Popular lectures and addresses (3 vols, London, 1891–94), i, 73–136, p. 73.

Collins , op. cit. (ref. 14).