From Clouds to the Brain. Celine Cherici
coming in for each consultation is the best proof of the effectiveness of this treatment. Already known, but not yet known enough, this new therapeutic method, which has already taken the largest extension, is destined for the brightest future.14 (author’s translation)
In addition, the development of psychoanalysis and Charcot’s therapeutic hesitations moderated what could be conceived as a general craze for electrical interventionism on mental ills. Freud, who was first interested in Erb’s work, ended up considering this treatment as chimerical:
Whoever wants to make a living from the treatment of nervous patients must obviously be able to do something for them. My therapeutic arsenal contained only two weapons: electrotherapy and hypnosis, as sending to a hydrotherapy facility after a single consultation was not a sufficient source of gain. I referred to W. Erb’s manual for electrotherapy, which gave detailed prescriptions for the treatment of all the symptoms of nervous diseases. Unfortunately, I soon had to admit that my docility in following these prescriptions was of no avail, that what I had taken to be the result of accurate observations was nothing but a phantasmagorical structure. [FRE 50, p. 40, author’s translation]
Thus, it appears that the notions of the electrical body and then of electric consciousness followed one another during the 19th Century and nourished an already well-established culture of electricity. Difficult to separate from technical advances and exploratory and therapeutic applications, medical electricity permeated research on the integration of Man in nature, on the materiality of his mental mechanisms. From the objectification of this electrical nature, an imagining of the power, technique and capacity that electricity has to change us ourselves was born. Alongside the Neohippocratic movement was also the idea that individuals possess sensitivities to electricity on which their character traits depend or influence.
1.3. Possible electrical profiling?
The notions of hot-headed, irritable temperaments that punctuated the texts of electrifying and/or galvanizing doctors until the end of the 19th Century accounted for the observations that two subjects, dead in the same conditions and not subjected during their lifetime to the same temperament, will have organs that do not react in the same way to electrification or galvanization. Moreover, this electrical individualization also influenced the person during his or her lifetime: did the person have a more explosive temperament caused by an excess of animal electricity? Or on the contrary, a softer temperament?
In 1787, Petetin drafted a typology of personalities likely to have behavioral disorders. His analysis was based on the idea that everyone has an innate quantity of electric fluid circulating in their body, which causes predispositions to these ills:
The violent & fleeting convulsions which characterize it, are announced in advance by the signs of a dominant electricity in the whole animal economy; such are the supernatural strength, inconceivable agility, the vivacity of ideas, combined with the greatest volubility in expression, a more lively heat spread over the torso, the head & the arms, while the lower extremities are usually devoid of them, a sometimes voracious appetite, the desire for cold & sour drinks, the fire of the eyes, insomnia, or turbulent sleep, all the passions of the soul, exalted. [PET, 87, p. 86, author’s translation]
In a gendered tradition of understanding hysterical symptoms, he described passions in women that “…accumulate too much fire principle in the brain, & dispose them to frequent convulsive outbursts” [PET, 87, p. 91, author’s translation].
These points developed by Petetin are interesting. Indeed, when Henri Gastaut (1915–1995) tried to outline a typology of electroencephalographic tracings [ADR 54] in connection with archetypal personalities, we find the way in which these links between the nervous system and electricity developed.
Then in 1803, Cassius explained on the one hand the direct effects of galvanism on subjects and on the other hand the link between temperament, in the psychological sense of the term, and the ability to be stimulated by galvanism. The notion of temperament refers to a trait of character as well as to a link with the supposedly singular strength of the nervous fluid specific to each individual:
Among the influences that Galvanism exerts on the animal economy are the acid and sometimes alkaline taste, the production of lightning, the pain one feels, the involuntary movements one makes when touching the galvanic devices, the convulsive state into which it plunges those with the very irritable nervous type. [CAS 03, pp. 22–23, author’s translation]
Experiments were made to discover, or not, the singularities of the nerves of people suffering from “electrical diseases”:
When an epileptic died, I had a surgeon cut some of his nerves, and I also got similar ones from another corpse which had not been subject to nervous diseases during his lifetime. These nerves being well dried out I rubbed them in the dark & I saw a lot of electric light, between the rubbing & the nerves of the one who had been subject to spasmodic movements; I saw very little of it in the nerves drawn from the second body. The nerves of a person prone to spasms are therefore more electric than those in whom one has never, ever noticed similar convulsions as the experience I have made, & that I have repeated several times with the same success, having kept these nerves for more than two years. [PAL 47, p. 225, author’s translation]
One can wonder about this imaginary electrical singularity of an organism suffering from nervous disorders. It must be brought closer to the notion of a body designed as a natural electrical machine. If the sensitivity and excitability of the nerves depended on a personality marked by a more or less nervous temperament, the medical applications of galvanism were fairly quickly focused on nervous disorders. This fact influenced its reception in the medical world:
No doubt people of excessive nervous susceptibility are usually well served by a bath or simple galvanic current, so M. Labeaume’s method must be useful to patients with an eminently nervous constitution. [LAB 28, p. 25, author’s translation]
Also experimenting on human chains15, Humboldt quickly noticed the variability of conductivity from one person to another, which could be almost zero in some people. This observation completed the question of a subject’s electrical temperament; this temperament influencing both body and consciousness.
To conclude this chapter, here is a current scientific episode whose rigor is not to be judged, but to underline its inscription both in the long temporality adopted in this work and in a scientific imagining of the neuro-electric omnipotence. In 2016, a controversial article appeared on the Frankenstein effect. Canavero, known for his research in the field of human head transplants, using Aldini and Ure’s experiments, took up the following theme:
Data from two centuries ago prove that a fresh cadaver, after hanging or decapitation, can be mobilized by electrical stimulation for up to 3 hours. By administering spinal cord stimulation by applied paddles to the cord or transcranial magnetic stimulation to M1 and recording evoked potentials, it should be possible to test fusogens in fresh cadavers. Delayed neuronal death might be the neuropathological reason. [CAN 16]
It is doubly relevant to the history of cadaver experiments: on the one hand, a fresh cadaver can serve as an experimental substitute for the animal model; on the other hand, it allows us to explore the neuropathological foundations of the process of dying. Canavero placed his research in the context of isolated neuronal cell cultures:
Testing on brain dead organ donors in the interval between declaration of brain death and initiation of organ harvesting is an ethical option. Reviewed data from two centuries ago prove that another ethical option is available, that is, experimentation on fresh cadavers. As discussed, movements can be elicited in a fresh cadaver by electrical stimulation for up to 3 hours (and possible more). This suggests that the cerebral cortex and its projections to the spinal cord and the cord itself remain viable for up to 3 hours postmortem. This includes both the cell bodies and the synapses. […] spinal cord stimulation above the level of attempted fusion or transcranial magnetic stimulation to M1 followed by recording motor evoked