--On Tuesday, November 19, 2013 10:33 PM -0800 Jim Bell <jamesdbell8@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: brian carroll <electromagnetize@gmail.com>
To: cypherpunks@cpunks.org Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2013 10:01 PM Subject: dual-use (urls)
Shocking Medical Devices From Another Century (via digg) http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/11/bakken-museum/?viewall=true
[&] The Bakken Museum of Electricity in Life http://www.thebakken.org/
In 1978, I visited the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC for the first (and so far, only) time. They had a display of "quack medical devices", that included a high-voltage AC device attached to glowing neon-bulb-type tubes. The idea was that these tubes would be pressed against a person's flesh, thus capacitively coupled through the glass, including a glowing light within the tube, and inducing a mild electrical current. At the time, I accepted the idea that this was, indeed, an example of a "quack medical device". In 1996, I began work at a Vancouver Washington contract-electronic-design/manufacturer firm. One of the major products that this company made were "TENS" devices. (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulators http://www.tensunits.com/ ). They were/are intended to reduce chronic pain. They worked in pretty much the same way that those "quack" early 1900's devices worked: Cause a AC small current to flow within flesh. What was thought to be 'quack' in 1978, turned out to not be 'quack' at all!
Or rather, what was quack in 1900 is stil quack today. When did the Great Scientists of the Great Medical Community stop lobotomizing homosexuals? Oh, but the 'science' of psychiarty isn't quackery at all... J.
Jim Bell