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Electroresuscitation
in
The Medical Guide (13th Ed'n) By Richard Reece, M.D. (London, 1820)
Reece's book is contemporaneous with Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (London, 1818). They share a common interest: restoration of life where death has apparently taken hold. And they share a common opinion, that galvanism is one of the stronger weapons in the fight against death. (In context, Frankenstein can be seen as an early form of science fiction.) The "reanimation chair" of Dr. De Sanctis, described in The Medical Guide, has three pertinent features: a bellows to give forced ventilation; a metallic tube to be inserted in the esophagus; and a voltaic pile attached at one pole to the esophageal tube, and at the other to an electrode. This electrode was to be successively touched to "the regions of the heart, the diaphragm and the stomach ...". De Sanctis and Reece were recommending cardiac electrostimulation by way of esophageal and precordial electrodes; and if the electrode were to be touched at perhaps one contact per second, a form of manually regulated pacing to boot. It is hard to estimate the voltage of early piles; but a pile of "one hundred plates" would probably have an output somewhere in the vicinity of 20 to 100 volts. This, coincidentally, overlaps the voltage range found effective by Shafiroff and Linder in their 1956 study of esophageal stimulation of the heart. Quoting Schechter's analysis of their results,
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The stimulating effects of electricity were noticed
early in the investigation of the subject. Galvanic electricity
was discovered in the twitching of frog muscles, and the Voltaic
Pile used to create a simulacrum of the electric eel. There was
a strong association between galvanism and "animal electricity."