Tractable Thunder: Early Days of Electricity, Part 2

Electricity lost its magic over the course the 18th and 19th centuries. The "invisible fire" steadily transitioned from a mysterious force of wonder to a mundane reality of daily modern life. In this two-part edition of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the various electrical experiments, stunts, inventions, performances, innovations, occultisms and atrocities that transformed the tractable thunder.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stop
works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
By names Robert Brown and I'm Joe McCormick, and this
is going to be the second part of a two
part series on the weird history of electricity, different than

(00:24):
the history of electricity you might have learned about in
school with the the invention of the various different technologies.
Here we wanted to focus on the strange social and
psychic undercurrents, if you will, of the of the development
of electricity and human society and knowledge. Yeah, kind of
the midlife crisis of human cultures, uh, understanding and attitudes

(00:46):
towards electricity as it goes from pure mystery to the mundane. So,
if you haven't heard part one before you listen to
this episodes, you should probably go back and listen to
part one. But if you don't care about coming in
the middle of a conversation then and you're here, then
that's fine. Yeah, I mean a lot of this stuff,
A lot of the episodes that we discuss are gonna

(01:07):
you know, they can stand on their own, but we
do highly encourage you to check out part one. Okay,
So I'm going to start in a kind of counterintuitive
place for this journey of psychic electricity, and that's with
the English writer and poet Thomas Hardy. So you probably
remember him from from writing extremely depressing novels that you
had to read in high school, you know, the Return

(01:28):
of the Native Mayor of castor Bridge. What did you
have to read in high school? I guess it was
castor Bridge. That's the one that I feel like I'm
most familiar with. Yeah, or you might have write his
poems like The Darkling Thrush, which is one of my favorites,
and it contains these lines as one of the stanzas
of the Darkling Thrush. The land's sharp features seemed to

(01:48):
be the centuries corpse out linked his crypt, the cloudy canopy,
the wind, his death lament, the ancient pulse of germ
and birth was shrunk and hard and dry, and every
spirit upon the earth seemed fervorless. As I it's kind
of bleak, Yeah, But so he's talking about something that

(02:11):
happened in the past century. Yeah. I think one of
the early names of this poem, before it was called
The Darkling Thrush, was something like the Corpse of the
Past century. Or something like that. Uh. And this was
written around nine and that, you know, the end of
the eight hundred, So so what happened what happened to
our fervor during the century he spoke of. I don't

(02:31):
know exactly what dissipation of spirit Hardy was referring to,
but here's a stab that that I'd like to think
had something to do with it. It might have had
something to do with electricity. And so there's a great
Thomas Hardy quote that is it's quoted in one of
the papers were using as a source on this episode,
which is Life, Death and Electricity by Nicholas Ruddick. And

(02:55):
this was a great paper, by the way. Yeah, this
was really good and it's uh. I think this one
was available out there for everyone to read. Yeah, and
it chronicles a lot about the developments of electricity in
the late eighteen hundreds leading up to the execution of
William Kimler, which we started the last episode with and
we'll get to later in this one, but it tells
the story of how hard he was quote attending an

(03:16):
electrically lit evening church service in London in May. What
was illuminated was the outdated nous of the old beliefs,
and Hardy wrote about it, quote, everything looks like the
modern world, the electric light and the old theology seems
strange companions. And the sermon was as if addressed to

(03:38):
the native tribes of primitive simplicity and not to the
nineteenth century English. Uh. Now, putting aside the you know,
racist and colonial assumptions of the metaphor hard he uses
there that is an interesting observation in line with what
we observed in the techno religion for the Masses episode.
There is something, uh, though though it has often been

(03:59):
sur mounted by various cults and people of varying theologies,
there is an inherent tension for some reason between technology
and religious belief. Yeah, because especially with an old religious belief,
there's often that sense that it's set in stone and
and this is the uh. You know, that this is
the truth that is buried in the earth for all

(04:20):
future generations to live by. And what gives it its
power is its ancient otherness. Right? And then what do
you do when a new otherness centers the picture? When
when suddenly we we know more about the what was
magic in the past, when we know we can explain
electricity or at least harness it in ways that we
had no ability to in the days that the tablets

(04:40):
were here were carved. Yeah, and so an observation that
Ruddick makes in his paper is that he's commenting that
by the eighteen nineties, as electricity came more and more
into our lives, you know, you you might have hundreds
of different interactions with electrical appliances and services throughout the day,
it was becoming increasingly difficult, he says, to talk about

(05:00):
transcendental matters in electrical terms. But before we get to
the sort of the death of the sacred ghost of
electricity in the the sort of mundane ravages of modern life,
I want to go back to a period where there
was still much weirdness and wonder to be had. Yeah,
we're still we're still in the time period of the

(05:22):
the experiments discussed previously where we're beginning to understand electricity
a little bit. We're exploring its properties, we're also exploring
the you know, it's dramatic side, it's entertaining side, as
well as it's it's dangerous and lethal side. Absolutely. So, uh,
I want to talk about a scientist who has been
largely forgotten despite the fact that he was one of

(05:45):
the most famous and celebrated scientists of the entire world
in his day, and his influence on modern scientific thought
is just absolutely incalculable. And that that is the scientist
Alexander von Humboldt. Now, I recently read a book about
Alexander von Humboldt. It was the Invention of Nature Alexander
von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wolf. This is a

(06:05):
great book, by the way, but it talks about this
strange fact that he's been mostly forgotten about, despite the
fact that he was responsible, for example, for the scientific
concept of ecology, thinking about natural environments not as sort
of a god established domain of unchanging character, but as
complex dynamic systems that vary with climate and resources and

(06:28):
are subject to dramatic change even by altering a small variable.
If it's a if it's sort of a keystone variable.
But I want to communicate the spirit of how scientific
experiments in animal electricity were continuing uh in the in
the late seventeen hundreds in early eighteen hundreds by looking
at a couple of events in Alexander von Humboldt's life.

(06:49):
So in the seventeen nineties, Alexander von humbold actually became
friends with the rock star German poet Johann wolf King
Von Guta and Gerta was the poet who, in his
version of Faust wrote, what dazzles for the moment spends
its spirit? What's genuine shall posterity inherit? I always like
that cinnamon, and I think it also sort of applies

(07:11):
to some of the showmanship about electricity that we oh
yeah mentioned in the last episode. Yeah, very much so,
because I mean, at this point electricity has been a
show and electricity has often involved uh, dead animals, Yeah,
to varying degrees. So so caten in mind as we
move forward. But Gota wasn't just a poet in his day.

(07:31):
He was also a really dedicated scientist, and one year
in the seventeen nineties, about three years after von Humboldt
and and Gota had first visited, they spent time together
in a city called Yugana to talk through scientific ideas
and conduct this long series of experiments on animal electricity,
which Humboldt was writing a book about at the time.

(07:51):
So he was interested in that that that animal electricity,
that that idea that there was a specific intrinsic electrical
system to the body. Yeah, and as we discussed in
the last episode, it was later proved not true that
animal electricity is a different kind of electricity than the
external electricity that's in lightning and everything else. But but
he was still he was trying to suss it out.

(08:12):
He was trying to figure out what was going on
with the role of electricity in the bodies of animals.
So I want to read a quote from a section
of of Andrea Wolf's book where she says that Humboldt
and go To had been hanging out when there there's
a violent thunderstorm on this on this spring day, and
after the after humbold had been out taking in, you know,

(08:35):
atmospheric readings while he was watching the lightning happened during
the storm. The next day, he finds out that a
farmer and his wife nearby had been killed by the
lightning in the storm. So Wolf writes, he rushed over
to obtain their corpses, to obtain exactly Yeah, he just
obtained them, yeah, uh, she writes, laying out their bodies
on the table in the round anatomy tower. He analyzed

(08:57):
everything the man's leg bones looked as if they had
been pierced by shotgun pellets, Humboldt noted excitedly, but the
worst damage was to the genitals. At first, he thought
the pubic hare might have been ignited and caused the burns,
but dismissed the idea when he saw the couple's unharmed armpits.
Despite the increasingly putrid smell of death and burned flesh,

(09:18):
Humboldt enjoyed every minute of this gruesome investigation. I cannot
exist without experiments, he said. So, so Alexander von Homeboldt
just shows up on the doorstep following the tragic event
and says, Hey, I'm Alexander von Homeboldt. I'm kind of
a big deal. I need to see the gruesomely distorted
bodies of the lightning strike victims. The funniest thing is

(09:40):
this was before he was a really big deal. This
is when he was an upcoming big deal. But yeah,
he I need to examine the scorched genitals for science.
But Wolf also writes about one of Humboldt's favorite experiments
that he ever performed, which was when he and Gerta
were together experimenting on frog legs. This is uh reve
visitting the themes of Luigi Galvani right, who saw the

(10:03):
frog legs dance when stimulated by the electricity of the
lightning Wolf writes. One morning, Humbldt placed a frog's leg
on a glass plate and connected its nerves and several
muscles two different metals in sequence two silver, gold, iron, zinc,
and so on, but generated only a discouraging gentle twitch
in the leg. When he then leaned over the leg

(10:24):
in order to check the connecting metals, it convulsed so
violently that it leapt off the table. Both men were stunned,
until Humble realized that it had been the moisture of
his breath that had triggered the reaction. As the tiny
droplets in his breath had touched the metals, they had
created an electric current that had moved the frog's leg.
It was the most magical experiment he'd ever carried out,

(10:46):
Humboldt decided, because by exhaling onto the frog's leg, it
was as if he were breathing life into it. It
was the perfect metaphor for the emergence of the new
life sciences. So again, this strangely religious aspect coming into
the relationship between between electricity and the body. Yeah, I
like that. But the breath of life, even though the

(11:07):
breath is actually just delivering moisture that helps to complete
the circuit. Now, another funny thing is not being there
and uh and knowing exactly what happened. It's hard to
even determine if Humboldt's interpretation of what actually caused the
twitching is correct. Yeah, I mean it sounds sensible because
it also plays into into the example we'll get to

(11:29):
at the end of this podcast regarding the electric chair. Now,
I want to mention one more example of electricity bioelectricity
experiments carried out by Humboldt, and this one was later
when he was in South America doing experiments and traveling
through the rainforest with with someone named I'm a boon Plan.

(11:49):
Bon Plant was his his traveling and scientific companion. I
believe he was a botanist. But anyway, there was an
incident where Humboldt found out from some locals in part
of Venezuela, I believe a town called Calaboso, that there
were a bunch of shallow pools in the area that
were filled with electric eels, and he Humble got very

(12:11):
excited about this because he was a little bit eel crazy,
and and he'd heard that eels could deliver electric shocks
of more than six hundred volts. Uh So, but then
he's got a problem, right, So, if an eel can
deliver a shock of more than six hundred volts, how
do you catch it? Especially since, as as Wolf notes,
the eels in these pools were buried in the mud

(12:33):
at the bottom of the pools. So how do you
get them out? Well, some of the locals came up
with an idea. They said, we'll round up a whole
bunch of horses. And so they rounded up a bunch
of wild horses from the nearby prairies, and they drove
the herd into the pond. So they had these wild
horses stomping in the mud that had electric eels in it.

(12:54):
And I want to read another section from Wolf. She writes.
As the horses hooves turned up the mud, the eels
wriggled up to the surface, giving off enormous electric shocks.
In tranced tumbled watched the gruesome spectacle. The horses screamed
in pain, the eels thrashed beneath their bellies and waters
surface boiled with movement. Some horses fell and trampled by

(13:14):
others drowned. Over time, the strength of the electric shocks diminished,
and the weakened eels retreated into the mud from where
Humble pulled them with dry wooden sticks. But he hadn't
waited long enough. When he and bon Plant dissected some
of the animals, they endured violent shocks themselves. And then
she goes on to describe how for hours after this
they were just doing experiments on the eels, touching an eel,

(13:37):
touching an eel, standing on metal, touching an eel, standing
on clay, touching an eel, and touching each other, both
touching eels and making out a little bit. It just
it almost sounds like that's part of it again. There's
this strangely sexual element to the union of of sharing
the electrical kiss, you know, the kiss of Venus. But
Wolf concludes the section of the book by talking about

(13:59):
how Humble began to think about electrical forces. The forces
that she writes variously created Lightning bound metal to metal
and move the needles of compasses. All flow forth from
one source, and all melt together in an eternal, all
encompassing power. M hmm. I like that. That's a very
poetic and and kind of supernatural but scientifically grounded if

(14:24):
you will, of view of electricity. Yeah, and I get
the impression from this book that Humblet was not a
very religious guy. Yet here's this. I mean, he's not
invoking supernatural entities or God's but he is talking about
it in this kind of vaulted spiritual language. So again
it's blurring these lines. Yeah, I mean, because they're standing
on the edge of the unknown, right, and they're they're

(14:45):
contemplating an unknown, allowing themselves to be shocked by the unknown.
It's like like any given astronomer. You could have the
most most atheistic astronomer possible, but if they're they're engaging
with the night sky and viewing up at the cosmos,
they're gonna be likely overcome by the wonder of the
cosmos in some form or another. Oh yeah, uh, you

(15:06):
know this whole story about the electric eels that reminds
me of my favorite Marlon Brando story. But yeah, I
don't know if you've heard this. I believe this one
has been This has been told by Ed Bigley Jr.
Is this a scene that was cut from on the waterfront. Um.
It's it's a little older Brando that we're dealing with here.
This is very much like the larger, um, crazier, reclusive Brando.

(15:27):
So Um. According to Ed Bigley Jr. Uh, he gets
he gets a call to come over to h to
the Brando household. Uh, you didn't know what it's going
to be about it. He drives over, presumably in an
electric car, right and uh he comes inside and Brando
asked him and says, hey, could I get a bunch
of electric eels and power the house? And uh, you know,

(15:49):
And so Ed Begley Jr. He's the he's the bicycle
to power your water heater kind of guy. Yeah, you know, yeah,
he's you know, he's versed in alternative energy to a
certain extent, and it's kind of a you know, you
know it has often lent his voice to some of
those causes. So, yeah, Brando figured he was the guy
to ask, and so Bagley has kind of taken aback.
But he says, you know, I don't think that would

(16:10):
be possible. I don't think it would work. And indeed,
it's difficult to try and empower anything with an electric
eel because for one thing, they well, for a number
of reasons. But you know, you'll see aquariums where they
have like a little Christmas tree, and the electric eel
will cause the tree to light up periodically. But the
eel does not admit, you know, a continuous amount of voltage.

(16:33):
It's just you know, quick shocks here and there. So
it would be it would be one of those things
where if you try to engineer a system that uses
the electric eels, you quickly out engineer yourself and realize
you're better off using some other form. But but anyway,
so Baguley says, I don't think that is gonna work,
and Brando just kind of gets grumpy and says, it's
always no with you. So I love I love that

(16:58):
story because it's it's just it's just a great brand
of story and a great electric eel story. Did he
point a gun at him? I tell me true. Maybe
I don't know, But at any rate, it was like
the audience was over at that point. It's like, all right, Bagley,
you've turned me down here on this electric eel business
that I had a lot of hope built up for.

(17:18):
So just go, just go, don't tell me not to
any more of my disappointed the King of Spain or something. Well, so,
as as you can see from the stuff we've been
talking about, experiments about electricity didn't stop in the mid
seventeen hundreds, where we were talking about a bunch of
the experiments in the last episode. They continued into the
turn of the century, the early eighteen hundreds, and uh,

(17:40):
and it wasn't It also wasn't just the known scientists
of the age who experimented with electricity. One of the
weirdest stories I came across as a story about Percy
Shelly Old P. B. Shelley, the poet, you know, the
author of what might you best know him from? Maybe Ozymandias? Yeah,
I would imagine that's probably the most famous look on
my work, Seeing Mighty and Despair. But actually you might

(18:03):
know him best for being the husband of Mary Shelley,
who wrote Frankenstein. And we talked in the last episode
about the the the impression made on Mary Shelley by
the lecturers in electricity and how that might have led
to ideas in Frankenstein. But but her own husband might
have also inspired some of these scientific terrors, because there
is a story that when he was young, Percy Shelley

(18:26):
was learning about electricity during his schooling and his tutoring,
and he wanted to experiment. He wanted to do some
electrical experiments, and he ended up just mainly. These experiments
were shocking his sisters, and so his sister Helen wrote, quote,
when my brother commenced his studies in chemistry and practiced
electricity on us, I confessed my pleasure, and it was

(18:48):
entirely negatived by terror at its effects. Whenever he came
to me with his piece of folded brown packing paper
under his arm and a bit of wire and a bottle,
my heart would sink with fear at his approach, but
shame kept me silent, and with as many others as
he could collect, we replaced hand in hand round the
nursery table to be electrified. But when a suggestion was

(19:11):
made that chillblaines were to be cured by this means,
my terror overwhelmed all other feelings, and the expression of
it released me from all future annoyance. It sounds a
little bit like a young monster there, YEA, yeah, it
kind of does, or at least a mad scientist. But
again it kind of this is still the age of
the the sort of gentleman science, the scientist, you know,

(19:33):
the idea that any individual of means might take up
science as a as a pastime and would engage in
various experiments about natural phenomenon, right, or to to impress
people or get his yah yaz out. Yeah. But the
pretense here that that the electricity and the shocks could
be used to treat Chillblaines does sort of tie into

(19:55):
something that we should talk about, which is the role
of electricity in supposed uh medical practices and even magical
beliefs about healing. Yeah, this is a fascinating area because
I mean, on one hand, there there's the obvious role
that electricity plays in modern medicine and in the advent
of modern medicine that you think you might think about defibrillation, yeah,

(20:17):
or even so stuff is simple as being able to
use electric lighting during a surgical procedure, or electrical coudroization
tools during surgery and stuff of that nature. Like, it
really ends up playing a role in so many different
thoughtts of modern medicine. But yet the idea that electricity
in and of itself has a healing property to it um,

(20:39):
this ends up carrying a great deal of cultural weight
during the time. Sure, well, you don't have to invoke
medical principles to make the assumption that there's some kind
of power in the electrical fire that has has healing
potential over the body. I mean, there's always been the
idea of forces of nature like light and fire as

(21:00):
cleansing agent, and I think for many people electricity took
on some of these same elements. There was one claim
I read in a book called Witchcraft, Confessions and Accusations
edited by Mary Douglas. And according to a claim in
this book, in one case, uh the Bongwa people of
Cameroon took a child who was believed to be a witch,

(21:22):
and what they did to cure the child's witchcraft was
sent the child into an electrified region of the country
in the south, under the reasoning that a few months
months of exposure to electricity would cure the child's witchcraft. Well,
it seems seems plausible. I mean because because as we've
touched on before, like throughout history, humans have been encountering

(21:46):
electricity on one form, in one form or the other.
If not lightning on the hillside, then presumably just the
static discharge that occurs when you shock somebody. Uh, And
this was something that that interest at me. I cannot
but wonder why we don't see more examples, uh, particularly
related to this interpersonal discharge of static electricity at least

(22:09):
is a way to explain certain folk beliefs and magical
superstitious beliefs, you know, because at heart, that's a very
I mean, it's the same principle as uh, as as
two individuals touching each other while dissecting an electric fish. Right,
I mean you're there's this spark, sometimes visible spark between
two people. Well, yeah, that is. It's the literal embodiment

(22:32):
in reality of a thing that's often imagined in magical thinking.
In magical thinking, there's often this sense of of supernatural
contagion where you can pass the properties of one thing
onto another thing by touching, and that that's generally not true.
It's not true that you can gain the virility of
a bore by touching the boar's tusk to your head

(22:55):
or something. But you can confer electric charge by touching,
and this is demonstrated over and over in these public
lectures we talked about in the last episode. Yeah, you know,
it's also interesting. I want to mention that the according
to the Electrostatic Society of America. Um, that's the thing.
And this was actually mentioned in a blog post at
in probable dot com U in Probable research the Ignoble

(23:17):
Prize organizing body. Yeah. They they pointed out that the
quote this is from the electro Sex Society of America quote.
Electro Statics is an exciting area of science as its
most basic scientific questions remain unknown and highly controversial. What yeah,
And yet its consequences are widespread. For example, the uh

(23:37):
the identity of the species transferred to generate charge when
materials rub is being hotly debated in the leading scientific journals.
Some researchers argue that it is electrons, others that it
is ions, and yet others that it is bits of material.
What so that's crazy. I had no idea. Yeah, so

(23:58):
that's just a little footnote to remind everyone that that again,
even in our modern time there, when we take all
the electricity around us for granted, we still haven't solved
some basic questions such as why my child shocks me
when he comes down a slide on a chilly afternoon
of the playground. Fascinating but of course, the treatment of

(24:18):
witchcraft I mentioned earlier is not the only spiritually significant
use of electricity as a healing agent, right, that's right. Um.
We have a few different examples to cover here, but
one of the more interesting is that of John Wesley. Okay, Wesley,
the founder of Methodism, founder of Methodism, Christian theologian. If

(24:40):
you visit, um, I believe, yes, Savannah, here in our
own native state of Georgia, there is a statue of
of John Wesley there. Huh yeah, it kind of looks like, snap,
why in Savannah? What did he do in Savannah? He
visited there for a while. Okay, yeah he was. He
was in Georgia for a little bit, then he went back. Okay,
So it's kind of like how in Montrose, Switzerland, there's
the statue of Freddie murk Cury. Oh there is? Yeah,

(25:02):
there is? Which which version of Freddie Mercury. He's doing
a great dancing post. It's great statue. I highly recommended
if you're in Switzerland. Okay, all right, So you're probably wondering, Okay,
why John Wesley? Why did John Wesley? Uh? Why why
is this guy interested in electric has never heard of
him having anything to do with electricity or science in general. Yeah,

(25:23):
because prior prior to this, aside from knowing that there
is the founder of Methodism, like, the only other real
touchstone for me was that in seventeen sixty eight he
argued that quote giving up of witchcraft is in effect
the giving up of the Bible. Getting down to this
playing into this idea that a lot of witchcraft persecution

(25:43):
and the horrible links we went to to obtain witchcraft
confessions from accused witches, that a lot of that amounted
to this need to provide expert testimony of the physical
existence of a demonic afterlife and therefore the implied physical
existence of of God. Oh yeah, well, I mean, the

(26:03):
Bible acknowledges the existence of witchcraft and all kinds of
folk magic beliefs. So if to to sort of say,
we believe in the Bible, but we don't believe in
all the folk magic seems inconsistent. There's an aporia there, right,
as so Socrates might point out. Indeed, So yeah, it's
it's weird to think here's this guy who who sees

(26:25):
witchcraft as a reality that cannot be denied, and yet
he's also caught up in uh. This uh, this this
curiosity about electricity of all things. And apparently he became
interested in electricity in the late seventeen forties. Okay, so
this is right after the Laden Jar. Yeah, very much,
in the wake of mainstream fascination with electrical demonstrations and

(26:47):
the supposed therapeutic applications of electricity, like the medical electricity
we were we mentioned earlier. Yeah, exactly, the idea that oh, here,
here's a shock that'll cure what else you Uh, it's appealed,
though the point had reached even the lower levels of society,
and these are the very people that Wesley sought to
reach with methodism. And uh. This whole uh interconnectivity of

(27:11):
of Wesley's you know, spiritual purpose if you will, and
his interest in electricity. It's apparently an area that historians
have only recently begun to really dig into. Uh. And
that's according to again electrical historian Um extraordinaire Pala Bertucci,
who wrote a wonderful article titled Revealing Sparks John Wesley

(27:31):
and the Religious Utility of Electrical Healing. Bertuccia describes him
as an electrical supporter who combined moral instruction and natural philosophy,
and of course he wasn't the only person to do
this at the time, but but Wesley demonstrated the healing
power of electricity to further methodism, not electricity, not science, certainly, right,

(27:52):
So this was yet another religious technology technology and service
of religious or spiritual goals exactly like it plays right
into our into some of the issues we discussed in
the Techno Religion episodes. He used electricity itself as a
demonstration of God's power both as a benevolent force and
is a damning force, you know, so both sides of

(28:13):
the of the God coin right, the wrathful God and
the benevolent God. Yeah, she writes quote as signs of
God's wrath. Electric manifestations gave humans a glimpse of the
terrifying prospect of eternal punishment. At the same time, it
was because of divine benevolence that the power of the
electric fire was available to humankind as a healing agent.

(28:35):
It's the it's the magical carrot and the magical stick
combined in this natural phenomenon. Yeah, yeah, she says, sparks
revealed the divinity and and this really interests me in
light of that quote. I read earlier about witchcraft, because
Wesley supported the persecution of witchcraft for much the same
reason as he's as he's interested and demonstrating the power

(28:59):
of electricity. Uh, the confessed, which revealed the demonic, which
in turn revealed the divine. And here he is revealing
the powers of electricity in order to reveal the divine
to the onlooker. Demon in one hand, spark of electricity
in the other. That's great, that's great, you know. I
also can't help but think of the touch the screen
era of TV evangelism. I don't know what you're talking about,

(29:23):
and I've watched my share of TV evangelists, the idea
that you would you would physically touch the screen in
order to interact with the healing powers that were being
demonstrated by the TV UH evangelists, and and in doing so,
you're gonna feel, you know, some of that static discharge
on the screen. Right. So, to what extent is that
playing into uh, you know, religious electricity in a more

(29:46):
modern sense. That's interesting, I almost that makes me wonder
if that scene in Poultergeist is parodying the spiritual power
transferred through the screen by touching. Maybe so, maybe so?
I've actually never seen these uh these TV preachings, but
the it makes me think about a principle that often
gets brought up on another podcast. Do you ever listen
to the podcast Sawbones. No, I'm not familiar with it. Oh, yeah,

(30:08):
they're they're great there there. It's a it's a husband
and wife team who who are really fun and they
talk about basically some of the worst parts of medical history,
so all all the bad cure alls and treatments that
have been used throughout the years that didn't really help
people very much at all. And one of the things
they often talk about is the is that it did something. Principle,

(30:31):
um so a a fake treatment that doesn't actually treat
people is more likely to be accepted as effective if
it at least causes some kind of noticeable effect, even
if it doesn't cure you, even if it's discomfort, right
then you feel like, oh, it's it's doing something. I
feel it. I feel the shock, Yeah, exactly, And that's
what that's what I'm thinking about with the shock here.

(30:52):
If somebody can charge up a friction generator and and
give you a shock of static electricity from it, uh,
you'll feel it. And even if you don't know exactly
what's going on, how exactly it's supposed to work, what
is the method of action inside your body? You at
least felt something happen that was real and it was
powerful and pain sort of in our minds, I think

(31:14):
pain equals reality. We except when something painful happens that
that something important has happened. And so I can easily
see this kind of principle acting on the use of
medical medical electricity in the seventeen hundreds, even if it
wasn't really working to cure a lot of things, it
was it was doing something. Yeah, and hey, if you

(31:35):
can if you can combine pleasure and pain into the
same package, then you have a product that can likely
uh really resonate with the with with the with the
people out there. Oh and that certainly ties into another
aspect of the electrical treatments of the time, which would
be electrical quackery, very often having to do with sex.

(31:57):
There was a guy we mentioned in the last episode
where we're coming back to him now, one James Graham,
who was a Scottish believe he was born in Edinburgh.
He was a Scottish quack doctor essentially who was he
called himself a hygienist I think, and a and a
sex therapist in some way, who offered various vaguely defined

(32:18):
electrical treatments on on how to get people's sex lives
going again. He had some famous institutions. One's called the
Temple of Health, another one is called the Temple of Hymen,
And oh god, what was the deal with these things? Okay,
so first of all, he would he would apparently often
travel around and promote all this stuff, accompanied by the

(32:39):
beautiful young Goddess of health. Oh yeah, he had he
had like a train of attractive ladies to help him
promote his message of medical well being. Yeah. And you know,
like any good salesman, he has to have products he
can sell on the spot as well as uh, more
expensive products that are sell on location. He sold exposure
to electrical ether as well as a special ointment that

(33:00):
you could rub on your body. And wait, what was
the ointment? It was nervous ethereal Balsamo. Yeah, keep some
of that around. It's like bag bomb, except for you know,
sexual purposes. Yeah. But he also sold access to his
special electrically powered sex bed. Right, have you visited the
Temple of Hymen? Would you open. Uh, couples with marital

(33:23):
or sexual problems could test out the celestial bed for
a mere fifty pounds a night. Okay, so we're talking
about a twelve by nine foot bed. It has a
colored glass columns, mirrors of course, um, erotic paintings, flashing
electrical lights, organ music, and perfume. Hyeah. It it reminds

(33:45):
me a little bit. My wife once shot some pictures
of the inside of Kenny Rogers house when you lived
up I think in around Athens, Georgie. He had a
house he had bought this, this antique bed from James Graham. No,
but he he did have apparently a lot of mirrors
in the bedroom. Um, like a disturbing amount of in
the bedroom. Uh. And and that's the kind of thing

(34:07):
you would get out of the celestial bed. Well, you
know what they say in the Gambler, The best you
can hope for is to die in your sleep. So yeah,
but there you go. And if you're gonna dine your sleep,
you might as well be a lot of electrically powered
flashing lights. Uh there as well. Yeah, you gotta know
when to hold them. Yeah. One more interesting comment on
Graham from from Bertucci actually she writes that, uh he

(34:27):
he didn't. Now, in contrast to some of these other
electrical healers, which would shock you for for health, Graham
quote exploited the fashion enjoyed by electricity as a further
extravaganza for his healing center. The largest electrical apparatus in
the world, he called it was on display rather than

(34:48):
in use in the temple, where electrical vapors wrapped up
the patients. And this is a quote from his materials,
gently pervading the whole system with a copious tide of
that celestial fire, fully impregnated with the purest, most subtle,
and balmiest parts of medicines which are extracted by and
flows softly into the blood and nervous system with the

(35:10):
electric fluid or restorative ethereal essences. I don't know to
what extent he was using any kind of electrical technology.
He was given them some electrical vapors, aside from using
electrical lights on the guestlestial bed. I don't think you've
organ music organ music, yeah, but otherwise he has to
be the biggest scam artist by far that we've encountered

(35:31):
in these episodes. Now, again, that was around one we'd
have to wait a good century though, for the electric
vibrator to become reality and actual use of electricity to
directly deliver uh sexual pleasure. And we got it finally
thanks to Dr J. Mortimer Granville. Now, previously one had

(35:54):
to rely on George Taylor's eighteen sixty nine steam powered
manipulator or are the hand cranked Macua's blood circulator, all
in the name of treating supposed bouts of hysteria with
a healthy dose of orgasm. Yeah, and these are not
products that you would necessarily go to the store and
buy to use at your own leisure in the product

(36:16):
in the privacy of your own home, but more something
that would kind of be prescribed for you by your doctor,
which sounds like it takes some of the happiness out
of it. Yes, I would think. So. Okay, So now
we we've talked about electricity in the body strange healing characteristics,
but also we need to talk about electricity the occult,

(36:36):
the esoteric, and the spiritual in the sense of spiritualism,
because John Murray Spear also was into some electricity some science. Yes,
listeners to our techno religion may remember him as the
as the individual who whose followers built the electric Messiah. Yeah.

(36:57):
So he was a progressive radical of the eighteen hundreds.
He was an abolitionist. He was for a lot of
progressive political causes, but he turned in the middle of
the eighteen hundreds into a spiritualist leader, meaning he was
a guy who claimed to get messages from the spirit world.
And they detailed lots of plans for him for sort
of ungainly projects that he got his followers to carry

(37:19):
out on his half, including the construction of the new motor.
That's the thing we talked about. There was a there
was a vaguely described machine Messiah to harold the dawn
of a new age by being a perpetual motion machine
and changing the human of of the past into the
new man. Yeah. I think we described it before. Is

(37:40):
looking like a like the like the a of a
dalek and a coffee table bread and produced offspring. This
would be. That's pretty much it. But he also had
some interesting interactions with the science of electricity, and this
would have been later than what we were talking about before,
almost a century later, so that this would be in
the eighteen fifties. In the Remarkable Life of John Murray

(38:01):
Spear agitator for the spirit land. The author John Benedict
Bauscher mentioned several cases where the beliefs of the mid
nineteenth century spiritualists in America included spiritual significance of electricity.
So one one associate of spirits, who was a medium
and spiritual healer named Elizabeth French, had been quote an
electrical experiment or ever since she was young, trying to

(38:22):
revive victims of lightning strikes and drowning by the action
of certain rude batteries in the construction of which I
even then a child endowed with strong tendencies in that direction,
was myself the mechanic. That was Elizabeth French speaking there
at the end. Uh And she she later on partnered
with So yeah, so she's trying to use batteries to

(38:45):
bring people back from the dead. Pretty good. She partners
with Spear for electrical experiments in augmenting spiritual potential. So
communicating with the spirit world. They're saying, maybe we can
use electricity to amp up somebody's ability to communicate with
the spirits. And this included Spear trying to control and

(39:05):
influence the spirits with the aid of a suit of
armor made out of copper and zinc batteries. Yeah, and
we were talking about this. We're not sure if this
is the exactly the same UM outfit or a different one.
But the book also mentions that Spears had one Isaac Hedges,
who was a saint. The Lewis Magnetic Spiritualist had him

(39:27):
craft quote a wizard suit from minerals, metals, and stones,
which he wore during his experiments, and the suit itself
connected to a battery which supposedly boosted his personal electro
magnetic field. That's crazy. A battery of a wizard suit
made out of batteries. It's too good and spirits. He
didn't stop there. He also proposed creating telepathic towers. I

(39:50):
can't remember if we mentioned this in the other episode,
but he wanted to create a worldwide network of telepathic
towers which would each quote constitute a and focus of
magnetic and electric influences. And this would enable a sort
of broadband spirit medium channeling UH and worldwide communication. So
they'd have operators who are spirit mediums who'd use the

(40:13):
electricity generated by the towers to channel the voices of
the spirits back and forth between each other around the world,
and it would be faster than the telegraph. You know,
what's what's fascinating about this point in the timeline we're
exploring is that we're really looking at the just at
the enthusiastic supernatural employ of of of current electrical knowledge.

(40:37):
So on one hand you have this push towards the mundane,
and this is really this is really the area of
like the midlife crisis I feel, with the with the
supernatural qualities of electricity, where you see the the portions
of of of the populace going into just a really
extreme magical direction with it, which is crazy because is

(41:00):
even at this point in history, we're starting to get
a much better understanding of how to harness electricity for
utterly monday and purposes, just how to make the machines
that make our lives more convenient. Yeah, Like I feel
like we're the point in a Scooby Doo cartoon where
the villain and the ghost costume is apprehended and they're
about to pull the mask off. Meanwhile, John Murray Spear

(41:22):
and some of the other individuals were discussing here. They
are pointing at at the culprit and saying, no, that
is really a good right, It is not old man Bulvovsky, right,
But speaking of people named Blevotsky. That gives us a
good transition to one last thing about spirituality and electricity,
which is the theology of electricity that came through in

(41:44):
various forms of Western esso terrorism. Yeah, there's a great
paper on this that's out there titled The Esoteric Uses
of Electricity by Nicholas Goodrick Clark, which highly Remanda recommend
looking at if you want a little more on this
particular area. This again, this last sort of last thrust
of electrical spirit is m So what does good Rick

(42:06):
Clarke have to say about the electric theology, Well, he
discusses a few different individuals. He discusses leading up theosophy
proponent Madam Helena Blavatsky, whose belief in electrics, who believed
in electricity as quote an animating soul like force or fluid.
Now we've seen that kind of idea before, and of

(42:26):
course she also preached the power of the third eye
and the piney ole glands role in modern man is
an atrophy, the vestige of this organ of spiritual vision.
So just to give that's just to give you a
brief idea about the the about theosophy and what kind
of worldview she was immersed in. Yeah, if you're not
familiar with esotericism, these are I don't know what you

(42:50):
might call them. They're sort of alternative religions in in
the history of Western culture. Yeah, new religious movements for sure,
but theosophy one that maybe help didn't hold on as
well as some of the others that that cropped up.
Um he good Goodrick Clark also points to a scholar,
Ernst dens as H, having identified the quote theology of

(43:14):
electricity amongst a group of eighteenth century Swabian theosophers. He
claimed that the quote discovery of electricity and the simultaneous
discovery of magnetic and galvanic phenomena were accompanied by a
most significant change in the image of God, and that
it led to a quote completely new understanding of the

(43:35):
relation of body and soul, of spirit and matter. Now,
how does that play out? What does that look like?
Basically it means, I mean, basically what we're looking at
is all this new information about electricity is coming out,
and and there are individuals who are instead of saying,
I wonder how that casts new line of my understanding,
or they're thinking, oh, well, that's something that exists separately

(43:55):
from the religious understanding of the world. They're like, no,
this is the path. Let's pour all of our our
spiritual gusto into this new electrical format. So if the
if the electricity is the frontier of future science, this
could be the kind of religious thinking that says, no,
we're not going to ground our religious ideas in the past,

(44:16):
We're going to ground them in the future. Yeah. Yeah,
I mean it's it's kind of I mean, this is
the time of a huge change. And what do you
do when the world changes and you have either an
old set of beliefs or you sort of cling to
that mode of belief like you have to. You either
have to say no, that's bs, keep that away from
me and keep it out of the school books, or

(44:38):
you say, yes, bring it here, let me incorporate it. Um.
You know, and we've looked at some plenty of examples
where religion's ability to incorporate new scientific understanding it is
certainly a healthy thing. It doesn't always um lead to
sort of fringe belief systems. Well, it's funny now that
we think about electricity as just utterly uncontroversial religiously right,

(45:03):
I mean, there are so many scientific ideas that do
come into conflict with with religious ideas. Ideas about, for example,
I don't know, cosmology and the origins the universe, ideas
about biological evolution, ideas of geology conflicting with the literal
reading of some holy books. Uh, you see these pretty often.

(45:24):
But electricity seems just utterly theologically neutral. But that hasn't
always been the case. Yeah, I mean it's in the
same way that it's difficult for us to imagine this
this time when electricity was new and exciting. It's hard
to imagine it's it's newness and it's and its excitingness, Uh,
you know, having an impact on modes of religious belief.

(45:45):
Another example that Nicholas Goodrick Clark draws on is that
of Austrian occultist, racial political theorist, former monk and also
the founder of ariosophy as well as a pretty notable
anti might. Uh. This is Lens van Levenfells lived seventy

(46:05):
four to nineteen fifty four, and he saw electricity as
quote a measure of spiritual evolution unquote that was granted
only to arians, Christ and other spiritual intermediaries. That's pretty
nasty yeah, he was not a decent guy. Like, this
is a guy that when when Hitler rose to power,
he was just kissing up immediately apparently and m Hitler

(46:28):
just didn't really have time for him. But but yeah,
so yeah he was it was not a pleasant guy.
So as far as we know, Hitler didn't buy into
his electrical theological position. Now, he seemed from based on
what I was reading here, he really had no interest
in it. But but but LANs was one of these
guys who was like, yes, what you're preaching is fits

(46:49):
perfectly with with what I'm selling. Uh, And And what
I take it all to mean is that the simultaneous
advancement of supernatural belief and scientific understanding can result in
some some very weird, seemingly to the outsider weird modes
of belief, but also maybe exciting modes of belief. Okay,
but here I think it's time to arrive at at

(47:11):
the final stage of the transformer stepped down of the
spiritual power of electricity, the metaphor you mentioned in the
last episode, because something starts to happen, especially in the
second half of the nineteenth century, we might say where
electricity is losing a lot of its psychic, spiritual and

(47:31):
symbolic power. It's becoming less and less incorporated into I
don't know, transcendental language and metaphor. It's becoming less a
source of mystery and wonder and more something that resonates
with what Thomas Hardy said the quote we talked about
at the beginning of the episode. It highlights something very
natural and mundane in contrast to that classical sense of

(47:54):
holy otherness. Yeah, it's two am at the nightclub. Lawns
and Spear are both still dancing desperately to keep the
party going while other individuals are are going home. Yeah,
and so I want to use just one I think
pretty perfect example of this. So you it's December seventy nine,

(48:14):
and you have just received your copy of the Scientific
Americans Supplement, and you're leafing through it, and it features
on one page an invention by one M. Defoy, which
was an electric horse bit. Oh, so, the bit being
the part that goes in the horse's mouth. It was
a carriage armed with an electromagnetic apparatus that could send

(48:36):
electric current through metal wires embedded in the reins, and
if it opened the circuit to the current, it would
travel down the reins and through the bit in the
horse's mouth, giving the horse an electric shock through its
mouth and teeth. So, according to this article, it was
the invention was considered a success because it managed to

(48:56):
calm down several quote vicious and stubborn horses. Is uh
so that they's long enough that they could be shod.
They were trying to, you know, get some shoes on
these horses. They wouldn't cooperate, So zap him in the mouth.
The superintendent of the Parisian cab company, M. Camille wrote,
quote one horse that was to be shod went so

(49:17):
far as to lie down and roll over and over
on the ground, all the while struggling, defending himself and
fighting against everything. Nothing could subdue him. I then had
recourse to m. Defoy's apparatus, and on the first trial,
much to my surprise, the feet of the intractable horse
were lifted without any great difficulty. And on the second
trial it was as easy to shoot him as if

(49:39):
he had never made the least resistance. The animal was conquered.
So we've reduced the noble spark to something that you
just uh torment a horsewhip essentially just a bullwhip. Yeah. Well,
and that actually comes in because m defoy went on
to create another appliance along the same lines, the electric
riding whip, which is more or less like a taser

(50:01):
for horses. And if you're thinking, like what horror, nobody
would ever do anything like that today. I mean, we
have electric fences for livestock today. Uh, there are shock
collars for animals. So I mean using electricity to control
and tame wild animal instincts is something that is now
a grand tradition. It's not a very pretty one. We

(50:22):
don't like to think about it. It It doesn't seem like
a nice thing to do, but it's a thing we
do with the electric fire that used to be such
a cosmic mystery. Yeah. And you know, also when it
comes to taming horses, you know, not not every method
is that uh you know, lovable and horse whispery. But
this begins to get at something that that really comes

(50:45):
through in an essay we mentioned in the last episode
and we're going to refer to again now by a
Nicholas Ruddick called Life and Death by Electricity in eighteen ninety,
the transfiguration of William Kimmler, Like we mentioned, in the
last episode. This is a really great paper. It's worth reading.
It's a very interesting history of what was happening with

(51:06):
the power of electricity in the late eighteen hundreds. Well,
he points to an eighteen nineties Scientific American article that
it does a great job of just laying out just
how much electricity is in the average person's life. It
wakes him up in the morning, it cooks their breakfast.
It's on their right into work. It's all over work
when they go to church, their electric bells or an
electric oregon, and on up into your death. When you die,

(51:29):
an electric apparatus is used to carve your name into
a tombstone. So it we we give this enormous power
over our lives. Right, It's used in medicine. It can kill,
it can it can be a communication technology. And yet
at the same time it has lost its spiritual and
symbolic luster, hasn't it. Yeah, Like the poetry is seeping

(51:50):
out of it, you know, and uh, and and a
lot of it just has to do with the fact
that maybe all the poetic things that can be said
about it have been said. Like the language that we
used to describe it as getting a bit dull, even
even if it seems exciting to re explore it from
a modern perspective. And then yeah, it's also just everywhere,
Like how mystical can it be? If it cooks your toast,

(52:11):
how mystical can it be? Um, you know if it's
if it's just lighting a light bulb while you read something,
and I think to put a cherry on this. Uh.
This transformation into an utterly mundane and dirty, down in
the mud kind of force of nature was when it
was finally used in illegal execution. Yes, which again brings

(52:32):
us back to William Kimler, first man executed by electricity
under the world's first electrical execution law, New York State,
January one, eighteen eighty nine. And like, the history of
this is really interesting. For instance, just how how did
we come to the point where that was even on
the table? Well? Why why why use electricity? Well, apparently

(52:54):
the key arguments for this were coming from prominent supporters
in Buffalo, New York. And that's because Buffalo was really
close to Niagara Falls, and there was a lot of
hydroelectric work going on there. The damn that they began
the damn there in six and so they considered themselves
to be on the cutting edge of technology. Uh, you know,

(53:15):
it's like the Silicon Valley of the day. And uh
and and so in particular, you have one Dr Albert
Southwick who was lobbying, um with with New York state
representatives for electrical execution. Why with the state sent it's crazy, yeah,
we'll be I mean yeah, I mean it sounds like,
for instance, if Silicon Valley big shots were lobbying for

(53:38):
execution by virtual reality or maybe streaming video today, right, Like,
can you imagine where they're saying, Hey, we got this technology,
why aren't we you going it to kill people? Right?
Death by social media? Yeah. So, but they had some
core arguments for it. They said that, all right, this
is a humanitarian advancement. Forget hanging. Hanging. You know, hanging
has all of these horrible associations with the past, particularly

(54:00):
with America's pass. Let's move beyond it. Let's use something
new and exciting to kill people that has less weight
to it. I think there was inherently some sense that
low tech things were less desirable, Like it wasn't it
didn't even have to be that it caused less pain.
It was just more dignified to be killed by this
apparatus of science and technology, rather than the creepy, low

(54:24):
fi image of a hangman's news. Yea. And they also
added that, hey, if you're if you're gonna hang somebody,
you might something might go wrong. You have an accidental
beheading that takes place, or if you're actually doing a beheading,
there's could be an arterial spray. This is hygienically sound.
It is very signed to the electric chair. The electric
chair is the hygienic, scientifically sound way to go. And

(54:45):
since electricity had been observed to kill rapidly and seemingly painlessly,
it seemed like like another perfect way to avoid any
messy accidents during an execution. Don't worry about the you know,
something going wrong with the way you've you've you've presented
the gallows. This way you just turn. It's basically the
off switch for life. Do you think they believed these

(55:07):
arguments they were making or is this just completely mercenary
trying to get I don't know. I get the sense
that they believed it in the sense that you know,
there was data supported. I mean even just reading over
what I what I just heard. It's like if you're
if you're already on board with the idea that criminals
must be executed, then the most humane argument within that

(55:30):
mindset is, well, let's make it painless, let's make it quick,
let's make it hygienic, Let's do all of those things
that makes it less less horrible. You know, Well, was
anybody at this point still trying to hang on to
the sacredness of electricity? They actually were, and that and that,
and this is interesting because yeah, there were there were

(55:52):
others who were saying that this was a degrading use
of miraculous energy. Kind of I guess kind of like
the last of message of that earlier enthusiasm for it
that her people think, oh, you're gonna kill people with it. Now,
that's too far. Now, you've just really taken it into
an unfortunate area. Even Edison was against it. The man
who electrocuted, you know, numerous animals during the War of currents. Uh,

(56:16):
they're not topsy the elephant, apparently, despite some popular coverage
to the to the contrary. Huh. Yeah. So anyway, it
was a year before the conviction um of Kimbler was
finally upheld. Oh yeah, Kimmler had a lot of Litigation
and Appeals, Right, yeah, yeah, I mean this was a
kind of a big case. It went all the way
to the U. S. Supreme Court in eighteen ninety and

(56:37):
a lot of the litigation was presumed to come from
Westinghouse Electric Company. Is they were displeased to know that
their A C. Dynamos would be used in the execution,
having been obtained by three prisons in New York State.
So they were afraid of bad press for their electricity,
and they paid this guy's legal bills to try to

(56:58):
prevent it from from being used to kill him. Yeah.
I mean, it's kind of like, we create this product,
this podcast, what have we found out that prisons had
subscribed to the podcast in order to use it in
some sort of sonic death device for execution, or to
take in another direction. You know, we have musicians such
as Trent Resner who were outraged when they found out

(57:18):
that their music might be used by interrogators in certain situations,
or rock musicians who have politicians they don't like using
their music at campaign rallies. Exactly, You've created this thing
for one purpose, and here someone's gonna use it for
this this this rather despicable purpose. Over here, and then
there's this No one knew exactly how electricity would kill him.

(57:40):
Oh what a crazy controversy. Yeah, they didn't know what
electricity did the due to the body to cause death.
They knew it could cause death, right, but what did
it do? Yeah? I mean yeah, we knew that, we
observed it happened. We knew that happened. But but experts
were split on exactly what would happen um to kimmeler Um.
Doctors and knew that the body uti utilized electricity in

(58:02):
the nervous system. Some physicians even employed it again as
a curative measure, as we've discussed, some even taking the
view that the body was like a battery that needed
regular recharging. That goes back to the medical electricity we
talked about, Shock me, make me better. Yeah. So, and
then other experiments had proven electricity's ability to revive dying dogs.
Uh and and as well as some of these uh

(58:23):
these experiments we just solve that like the animation of tissue.
Uh So, perhaps he would enter into a state of
what they referred to as electrical asphyxia, where he would
be rolled out to the morgue while still alive and
presumably like screaming inwardly. Um. They weren't sure if if
he would die destroyed vital organs, if he would asphyxiate,

(58:43):
And then they didn't know if they should use a
C or DC. At first, they ended up going with
the former, as it was considered more dangerous a wasp
that would strike multiple times rather than a beasting. So
they constructed the A C dynamo at Auburn Prison UH
in order so that it would deliver a maximum of
six hundred and eighty volts. They killed a horse with it.
They killed a cow with it to test it out.

(59:05):
Thousand volts would kill a horse, five hundred would kill
a dog, so surely the full UH eighty would kill
a man without any difficulty. Okay, So what actually happened
when it came time for the execution? All right, So
they turned it on. They gave him seventeen seconds of
current and he was pronounced dead. And they think, all right,
we've done it. That was that sounds that seems perfectly reasonable.

(59:27):
Seventeen quick seconds of powerful current kills him dead. But
then a witness protests, stands up and says, he is alive.
I see him breathing and indeed his chest was moving.
He was still alive, so they panicked and they had
to turn it back on. And this is where things
started getting horrible. Blood pours from the ruptured capillaries in
his face, an unpleasant smell builds up, like I think

(59:50):
it was described as worse than unpleasant. Yeah, yeah, and
we'll read some of the quotes from from individuals who
witness this. Yes, like a stench of singed hair and
flesh and all told. At the end of it, Kimler
received eight minutes of current, and they later realized that
the electrodes didn't make full contact, so he didn't receive

(01:00:11):
the full power of the current, so they were just
shocking him at a lower voltage. Yeah, and uh yeah,
I think back to the breathing on the frog. Remember
breathing that the moisture of one's breath under the frog,
and it was enabled, you know, full contact to be
made with the electrodes on the frog. Similar here, they
say if Kimmeler had sweated more, or if they had

(01:00:32):
greased him up or something beforehand, that would have made
the difference. But instead they just end up roasting him
at a slower rate with with a lower voltage. So
yet again, this sounds kind of like the definition of
cruel and unusual punishment. Yeah, exactly the opposite of everything
they preached about. A swift, hygienic death. In fact, we
have a few quotes from it. We're gonna read from

(01:00:54):
me now, and this is from Kimmeler's Death by torture.
That's the headline, New York, Harold August out of eight nine,
men accustomed to every form of suffering, grew faint as
the awful spectacle was unfolded before their eyes. Those who
stood the site were filled with awe as they saw
the effects of this most potent of fluids, which is

(01:01:14):
only partly understood by those who have studied it most faithfully,
as it slowly disintegrated the fiber and tissues of the
body through which it passed. The heaving of a chest, which,
had it had been promised, would be stilled in an
instant piece as soon as the circuit was completed, the
foaming of the mouth, the bloody sweat, the wriothing shoulders,

(01:01:35):
and all the other signs of life. Horrible as these were,
they were made infinitely more horrible by the premature removal
of the electrodes and the subsequent replacing of them for
not seconds but minutes, until the room was filled with
the odor of burning flesh, and strong men fainted and
fell like logs upon the floor. And all this done
in the name of science. Yes, quite a spectacle and

(01:02:00):
again quite the opposite of what everyone was promised with this.
And then of course they ended up doing an autopsy.
They found that the small blood vessels between the brain
and the skull, that that all the blood was like charcoil, charcoal,
but not burned ash, but the fluid had been evaporated,
and the skull itself been badly burned. So yeah, all

(01:02:20):
these gory details made it out into the press, and uh,
it was kind of a pr nightmare for for the
electric chairs first entry into the modern world. And I
think Nicholas Reddick is making the point in his paper
that this is sort of this is the death blow
to the to the sacred spirituality of electricity, all of

(01:02:42):
the mystery, all of the metaphorical sense in which it
embodied virility, fertility, spirituality, the great unknown, the power of
the universe, the power of God, whatever it was that
you thought was imbued in this force. It was kind
of all gone by this point. Yeah, we've taken this
divine energy and we've like imperfectly tamed it. We've tamed it,

(01:03:05):
but then in trying to utilize it, utilize it poorly
and our just the most base purposes. Yeah, and and
again needlessly. It's not like we didn't know how to
execute people beforehand. I mean again, you can certainly give
credence to these cases that we needed more modern, hygienic
uh and dependable means of of carrying out these sentences.
But it's it's hard to argue that too much in

(01:03:26):
the face of of the results there, those those those
minutes and minutes of roasting electrocution. Yeah, but it also,
Reddick points out, wasn't just the this use, this barbaric
use of electricity. It was also something about the familiarity,
you know. He comments that by the eighteen nineties, as
electricity came more and more into our lives, he says, quote,

(01:03:47):
it was becoming increasingly difficult to talk about transcendental matters
in electrical terms. And I think that's really saying something
to me that suggests that there's something, uh, we we
sort of alluded to this early, but about holiness itself.
The concept of holiness and mystery. Uh, that is the
same as strangeness and otherness and familiarity with the thing

(01:04:11):
is death to a sense of the holy and the
sacred about it. Yeah. Again, if it's cooking your toast,
it's hard to find the divine in it. Of course.
Then again, I often think about how that's a lot
of what we do on this podcast is exactly challenging
that impulse discovering the divine. Exactly. I often want to
take a thing that's familiar and make it strange again,

(01:04:34):
to revisit something that we we might think of as
being utterly mundane and rediscover what's fascinating and very unsettling
and weird about it at So maybe in these episodes
we've helped you find something strange and fascinating about that
very force that cooks your reggo waffles. Hopefully so this
episode not paid for by Ego. Yeah. So there you

(01:04:58):
have it. Um, the role of the transformer is complete. Um,
the spiritual has become the mundane. And if you want
to check out more about this topic, be sure to
check out The Landing Paige For this episode of Stuff
to Blow Your Mind. Dot Com will include links to
related content, links out to that house Stufforth article about electricity,
to some of the sources we've used in researching the

(01:05:20):
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(01:05:42):
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(01:06:05):
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