living things, other than to produce shock or heating of the tissues, or that such forces played any sort
of functional role in living things. Yet precisely such reports did appear in the scientific literature.
Leduc, in 1902, claimed to produce a state of narcosis in animals by passing an alternating
current (110 hz at 35 v) through the animal's head. This report was confirmed and expanded by a
number of workers in many countries, and variations of the technique have been used clinically,
particularly in France and the Soviet Union. In 1938 Cerletti began experimenting with electroshock
therapy for schizophrenia (shades of Aldini!) and this technique subsequently found wide application in
psychiatry. In 1929, Hans Berger discovered the electroencephalogram (brain waves) which has, with
refinements, become one of the standard testing and diagnostic procedures in neurology. In the
following decade Burr began a long series of experiments on the steady-state or DC potentials
measurable on the surface of a wide variety of organisms. He related changes in these potentials to a
number of physiological functions including growth, development and sleep. He formulated the
concept of a "bioelectric field" generated by the sum total of electrical activity of all the cells of the
organism, and postulated that the field itself directed and controlled these activities. Lund in Texas and
Barth at Columbia University in New York also postulated a physiological role for these DC potentials,
particularly in regard to growth and development. In the same decade Leao demonstrated that
depression of activity in the brain (as judged by changes in the rate of nerve impulse production) was
always accompanied by the appearance of specific type DC potentials, regardless of the primary
causative factor. Gerard and Libet expanded this concept in a series of experiments in which they
concluded that the basic functions of the brain-excitation, depression and integration-were directed and
controlled by these DC potentials.
The generating source for the DC potentials observed by all of these workers was obscure. It
could not be the transmembrane potentials of Bernstein, nor could it be the single, short duration
impulses produced by the transient breakdowns in the transmembrane potential in nerve or muscle. As
a result, established science either ignored or rejected outright these observations as artifactual or as by-
products of underlying chemical activities and therefore of no importance. While the action potential
was well established as the mechanism of information transmission along the nerve fiber, and was
satisfactorily explained by the Bernstein hypothesis, a problem still existed. At the junction between the
nerve and its end organ (i.e. muscle) the microscope had revealed a gap, the synapse. Could not the
action potential become changed into an electrical current to cross this gap?
In a series of experiments in the 1920's, Otto Loewi at New York University proved
conclusively that the transmission across the synaptic gap was chemical-acetylcholine was released into
the gap where it then stimulated the receptor site on the end organ. Finally, the broad outlines of the
Bernstein hypothesis were proven by Hodgkin, Huxley and Eccles in the 1940's. Using microelectrodes
that could penetrate the nerve cell membrane, they demonstrated that the normal transmembrane
potential is produced by sodium ions being excluded from the nerve cell interior, and when stimulated
to produce an action potential the membrane permits these ions to enter.
The tidy world of the mechanists was complete. There was no vital principle, and electricity,
which had been identified with it, had no place in the biological world. Three hundred years of
intellectual ferment and experiment had come to a close with the establishment of a new
biophilosophy-the universal machine now included all living things. As vitalism gradually lost the
battle, bioelectricity, which had been its central theme for more than a century, was also gradually
excluded from biology until all that remained was the gross effects of large forces, shock and heat.
The concepts of the new philosophy fitted the observed facts so well that in its enthusiasm,
science ignored all evidence of electrical phenomena in living things as well as the fact that there were
ELECTROMAGNETISM & LIFE - 19