Chiropractic History Assignment Frankenstein, D.D. Palmer and the No. 2 Polysine Generator The McIntosh No. 2 Polysine Generator I Steve Zoltai is the collections de- velopment librarian and archivist for CMCC and was previously the Assistant Executive Director of the Health Sciences Information Con- sortium of Toronto.He has worked for several public and private libraries and with the University of Toronto Archives. Steve comes by his interest in things historical honestly – he worked as a field archeologist for the Province of Manitoba.He can be contacted at [email protected]. n the February edition of Chiropractic Health Assignment, we introduced you to our mystery machine, the McIntosh No. 2 Polysine Generator. Information about this elegant, but vaguely sinister, looking instrument has been elusive and our polysine generator has given us a merry chase. BUT FIRST A LITTLE CONTEXT . . . Ever since Luigi Galvani discovered that his accidental battery made the muscles in a frog’s legs jump, the belief in electricity as a life force became entrenched in the popular consciousness. Electricity was routinely administered for toothache, back pain and other pain-related ailments as well as for reviving asphyxiated children. In 1818, Mary Shelley immortalized the belief with her tale about a scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who learns how to create life and animates a being in the likeness of a man. By Victorian times, the notion that electricity was life, the source of regeneration and animation, was unstoppable. Electrotherapy was featured in all the higher-end spas in the 19th century. Electric baths were promoted as “health cures” and electric belts and corsets, which incorporated bat- teries, were marketed as being able to cure a wide range of ills. All sorts of electric devices were for sale with wild claims to health improvement. The turn of the 20th century was a moment of great optimism in the power of electricity. Henri Bergson’s “Elan Vital” provided a consciousness-based rationale for evolution and development of organisms, while others suggested this “essence” could be transferred to inanimate objects and activated with electricity. Elan Vital was a progression of the Vic- torian idea of Vitalism, itself little more than the concept of the soul with a scientific ve- neer. The effect of thinkers like Bergson, along with progressive urban electrification, only heightened this fascination with electricity and its wonders. ELECTRICITY AND CHIROPRACTIC Dr. Howard Vernon, our Director of the Centre for Study of the Cervical Spine at CMCC, is an avid student of the history of science. He writes: “The role of electrical treatment devices in chiropractic goes back to the inception of the profession in the early 1900s. There was a huge public interest in these devices, as Continued on Page 24 20 • CANADIAN CHIROPRACTOR | MAY 2008 www.canadianchiropractor.ca Steve Zoltai feature
Chiropractic + Naturopathic Doctor May 08: Page 20
