Lost, rediscovered
Geneve Campbell mentions a piece of history that I hadn't heard.

Nothing like this — what we are living through in most deep-Blue metro areas, primarily — has been tried at this scale in the entirety of human history.

We are permanently stuck in a doomloop from early Spring. Media sensationalism feeds public opinion, which is fed back into political (re)action by pseudo-responsive democratic elite and policymakers, which then stokes more media sensationalism which then... yeah. I think a lot about something I read about early on in the pandemic by @pinboard, about how the cure for scurvy was widely known and demonstrated, but how, eventually, that knowledge was not only lost but discredited.

The cure for scurvy was eventually rediscovered. And that gives me hope. But I fear the short- and medium-term.

Focusing on lost technologies and lost places and lost ideas is my MISSION here. I try to find forgotten bits of science and pull them back into the spotlight.

I hadn't thought about this particular pattern. Immunity has now been intentionally lost and discredited after 500 years of constant EXPERIENCE-BASED improvement, with several dramatic successes like polio and smallpox.

Campbell mentions that the vitamin connection to scurvy was lost and then ultimately rediscovered, which offers "hope" that maybe someday, several centuries from now, if anyone is still alive, the ragged remnants may rediscover immunity from literal scratch.

= = = = =

I've discussed another medical loss and rediscovery in detail: Electrotherapy.

Reprint from 2013:

= = = = = START REPRINT:

In my continual reading of 1901-era technology, I'd noticed considerable action in the area of 'electrotherapy', using small currents to help or cure various medical and mental conditions. Wasn't paying much attention to this; had always heard that it was quackery.

A recent bit of science news described a similar use of small currents across the head (now called TCDS), with seeming benefit in mood and memory performance.

Decided to look closely, and found that electrotherapy was emphatically NOT quackery, though some practitioners overstated its benefits. Early big-name neurologists like Erb and Duchenne were experimenting with electricity, and they had a precise understanding of how it worked. They knew which locations, which polarities, which current strengths to use for various conditions, how to stir up an inhibitory or excitatory response, how to dilate or constrict blood vessels.

They were able to document positive results in many areas, including improved mood, sleep, and memory; helping broken bones mend; and clearing cataracts.

Most impressively, they had a solid understanding of emotional conditions, and a properly humble view of their ability to fix or repair them. When electricity helped, they used it. When it didn't, they abandoned it.

All of this was firmly established several decades before Freud came along.

Well, what did Freud do? He replaced their direct and careful experimental results with a pile of non-observable and wildly complicated fantasies and epicycles. He replaced the long-standing (and probably innate) 'healer' model with a sequence of non-observable interactions THAT NEVER WORKED. Freud's system failed from the start. It's been exposed as a failure over and over, from within the psychiatric profession. But the Freudians are in charge, so any attempt to reassert facts is ruthlessly smashed.

Modernists always commit the same crime when they infest any field of human endeavor. They toss out centuries of facts and experiments and functional theories; replace the facts with instantly disprovable theories, lies, abstractions and epicycles THAT DON'T WORK; then ferociously obliterate anyone who tries to restore the facts. You can see it in climate "science" with Michael Mann, John Holdren, Lord Stern; in politics with Marx, Betty Fried[m]an, Irving Kristol; in economics with Marx, Milton Friedman, and Paul Krugman; in jurisprudence with Louis Brandeis and Stephen Reinhardt; in physics with Einstein.

= = = = =

Polistra and Happystar will demonstrate one particular use of electrotherapy, described in this book on p.38. Caught my attention because it's a wonderful gadget with a wonderful name, because it supposedly cured tinnitus, and because it sort of resembles a modern impedance audiometer.

The inventor, Dr Henry Houghton, was attempting to provide simultaneous physical and electrical manipulation to the auditory system. He added electrodes to a stethoscope, pushing electrons into the ears in pulses. The circuit is closed by an anode on the back of the head. Simultaneously, pulses of air are pumped into the stethoscope itself. He got results with one patient:



= = = = =

Well, let's try it. Happystar is feeling low, oppressed by tinnitus and anxiety.

Polistra decides to try Houghton's Phono-Faradic** device. At lower left is the air diaphragm; in the middle is a magnetically-pulled pendulum or metronome that turns the current and the diaphragm solenoid on and off.



Here goes:





= = = = =

**Footnote: Phono refers to sound, of course. The electrotherapists used faradic for treatments where a pulsed current flow was the important variable, and galvanic for treatments where a steady voltage gradient was the important variable.

= = = = =

Much later footnote: A new look at causes of tinnitus seems to validate Houghton's method.

According to their report, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, they have identified that the process called stimulus-timing dependent multisensory plasticity is altered in animals with tinnitus. They claim this plasticity is "exquisitely sensitive" to the timing of signals to a key area of the brain.

The dorsal cochlear nucleus is where signals from the auditory nerve enter the brain. Neurons in this area integrate this auditory information with other sensory signals, such as touch. In tinnitus, when the sounds from the ear are reduced, the signals from the somatosensory nerves in the face and neck - which relate to touch - are amplified. Prof. Shore and her team are now developing a device that combines sound and electrical stimulation of the face and neck in order to return the neural activity to normal.

Sounds familiar! Simultaneous pulsing to re-sync the nerves.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

The loss and return of electrotherapy took about 60 years, from 1920 to 1980. Electrotherapy is nowhere near as important as immunity, so a 60-year gap probably didn't kill a lot of people, just deprived them of function and pain relief which COULD HAVE BEEN AVAILABLE if the pill-pushers hadn't memoryholed electrotherapy.

Labels: Jackboot stomping forever

  ¶ 1:59 PM

  Satan's next step
Last year was Satan's VE-day over European institutions. The Roman former "church", the Anglican former "church", and the former "government" of Britain, all abdicated their ties to civilization and surrendered completely to Satan's purposes.

I was wondering about the next stage of victory. By now it's clear.

Inquisition.

All sorts of corporate and cultural leaders are SPINNING THEIR HEADS AND ROARING FROM THE ROOFTOPS that NO DISSENT WILL BE TOLERATED.

Tim Cook of Apple announced that sane people were not welcome as stockholders, which was superfluous because sane people have been avoiding all stocks for a long time. Several other CEOs followed suit.

Magazine-type websites have shut down their comment sections to avoid spreading sanity.

A strange monster named Torcello or Torquemada proposed in all seriousness that dissent from scientific "consensus" should be illegal. Since science ONLY progresses through dissent from current consensus, Torcello or Torquemada is proposing a complete ban on science.

Academic journals have rigidly and tyrannically ... but not officially ... enforced Consensus for many decades. Dissenters had to struggle against peer pressure and careerism, but didn't risk arrest and imprisonment. When the web came along in 1998, it briefly opened a broader social channel for 'heretical' thinking. Now the channel is violently and officially slammed shut.

Latest action: The founder of Wiki is ranting against 'alt-medicine':

Wikipedia's policies around this kind of thing are exactly spot-on and correct. If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals—that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately. What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of "true scientific discourse." It isn't.

Alt-medicine includes some techniques that are basically placebos and some techniques that work better than placebos. Polistra has covered one of the latter techniques in some detail. Electrotherapy, applying small currents across specific zones of the body, was an integral part of neurology in the early days. It offered well-documented cures or ameliorations of many physical and emotional problems. Around 1920 the pill-pushers took over all sides of medicine, and declared electrotherapy to be "lunatic charlatans". Then around 1980, after the screaming had died down, neurologists tried electrotherapy again and "newly" discovered the same cures and remedies that had been known and used in 1880.

If the new level of LEGAL censorship had been firmly and LEGALLY enforced in 1980, such useful therapies as TENS and TCDS would not have been "newly" discovered and used by proper doctors and PTs.

If all such techniques are officially silenced and prohibited, Big Pharma will gain even more obscene profits and many people will suffer or die unnecessarily and Satan will be happy.
  ¶ 4:29 AM

  Phono-faradic therapy
In my continual reading of 1901-era technology, I'd noticed considerable action in the area of 'electrotherapy', using small currents to help or cure various medical and mental conditions. Wasn't paying much attention to this; had always heard that it was quackery.

A recent bit of science news described a similar use of small currents across the head (now called TCDS), with seeming benefit in mood and memory performance.

Decided to look closely, and found that electrotherapy was emphatically NOT quackery, though some practitioners overstated its benefits. Early big-name neurologists like Erb and Duchenne were experimenting with electricity, and they had a precise understanding of how it worked. They knew which locations, which polarities, which current strengths to use for various conditions, how to stir up an inhibitory or excitatory response, how to dilate or constrict blood vessels.

They were able to document positive results in many areas, including improved mood, sleep, and memory; helping broken bones mend; and clearing cataracts.

Most impressively, they had a solid understanding of emotional conditions, and a properly humble view of their ability to fix or repair them. When electricity helped, they used it. When it didn't, they abandoned it.

All of this was firmly established several decades before Freud came along.

Well, what did Freud do? He replaced their direct and careful experimental results with a pile of non-observable and wildly complicated fantasies and epicycles. He replaced the long-standing (and probably innate) 'healer' model with a sequence of non-observable interactions THAT NEVER WORKED. Freud's system failed from the start. It's been exposed as a failure over and over, from within the psychiatric profession. But the Freudians are in charge, so any attempt to reassert facts is ruthlessly smashed.

Modernists always commit the same crime when they infest any field of human endeavor. They toss out centuries of facts and experiments and functional theories; replace the facts with instantly disprovable theories, lies, abstractions and epicycles THAT DON'T WORK; then ferociously obliterate anyone who tries to restore the facts. You can see it in climate "science" with Michael Mann, John Holdren, Lord Stern; in politics with Marx, Betty Fried[m]an, Irving Kristol; in economics with Marx, Milton Friedman, and Paul Krugman; in jurisprudence with Louis Brandeis and Stephen Reinhardt; in physics with Einstein.

= = = = =

Polistra and Happystar will demonstrate one particular use of electrotherapy, described in this book on p.38. Caught my attention because it's a wonderful gadget with a wonderful name, because it supposedly cured tinnitus, and because it sort of resembles a modern impedance audiometer.

The inventor, Dr Henry Houghton, was attempting to provide simultaneous physical and electrical manipulation to the auditory system. He added electrodes to a stethoscope, pushing electrons into the ears in pulses. The circuit is closed by an anode on the back of the head. Simultaneously, pulses of air are pumped into the stethoscope itself. He got results with one patient:



= = = = =

Well, let's try it. Happystar is feeling low, oppressed by tinnitus and anxiety.

Polistra decides to try Houghton's Phono-Faradic** device. At lower left is the air diaphragm; in the middle is a magnetically-pulled pendulum or metronome that turns the current and the diaphragm solenoid on and off.



Here goes:



I'm tempted to build a modern electronic version, without the air pulses. A 555 timer switching a JFET current-source should do it.


= = = = =

**Footnote: Phono refers to sound, of course. The electrotherapists used faradic for treatments where a pulsed current flow was the important variable, and galvanic for treatments where a steady voltage gradient was the important variable.

= = = = =

Much later footnote: A new look at causes of tinnitus seems to validate Houghton's method.

According to their report, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, they have identified that the process called stimulus-timing dependent multisensory plasticity is altered in animals with tinnitus. They claim this plasticity is "exquisitely sensitive" to the timing of signals to a key area of the brain.

The dorsal cochlear nucleus is where signals from the auditory nerve enter the brain. Neurons in this area integrate this auditory information with other sensory signals, such as touch. In tinnitus, when the sounds from the ear are reduced, the signals from the somatosensory nerves in the face and neck - which relate to touch - are amplified. Prof. Shore and her team are now developing a device that combines sound and electrical stimulation of the face and neck in order to return the neural activity to normal.

Sounds familiar! Simultaneous pulsing to re-sync the nerves.

Labels: 20th century Dark Age

  ¶ 5:40 AM

  Salute to Benjn Pike Jr part 2: Electrotherapy
Continuing from the intro.



The 1856 Pike catalog featured a Magnetic Machine For Medical Purposes on its cover. I've animated it, and added another unique item from the period. Both of these have a medical/magical flavor.

Here's the magnetic machine in use for electrotherapy. You can see that Happystar is getting a pulse once in each revolution of the big wheel:



The Magnetic Machine (left) is just an induction coil with a buzzer, the most common source of high voltage from Wheatstone to Marconi to the Ford T. The coil has a primary with less turns and a secondary with more turns, and the iron core (protruding on left) can be slid in and out for more or less coupling.

The Pike catalog gives $10 as the price of the machine itself, which is about $400 now.

This early version has a uniquely shaped buzzer:



A fine iron wire is pulled down when the magnets are energized, breaking the circuit to the magnets. When it springs back up, it closes the circuit again. This seems overly delicate, and most later buzzers had a more massive spring element, looking and acting more like a pendulum.

= = = = =

The big wheel in the middle is a Rheotome (flow-cutter), a long-forgotten source of timed pulses with controllable width. It was often used in electrotherapy to provide brief pulses that could be sync'd with the heart or other rhythms. It's driven via pulleys by the electric motor on the right. Speed varied with usage; apparently 10 RPM was typical.

This particular rheotome has two entirely separate timers, for different purposes. Each timer consists of a pair of sliding brushes mounted on the wheel. The wheel itself doesn't carry any electricity, and there's no connection between the two pairs of brushes. Each pair skates on the insulated turntable below the wheel, and each pair connects two sets of contacts mounted on or in the turntable, but only when it skates onto the contacts.



The outer pair of brushes has one needle and one brush for more precision. The needle is running over a 'compass rose' of precisely spaced metal contacts protruding from the insulating turntable. The outer brush is running over a continuous circle. When the needle passes over one of the precise compass points, current flows from the outer circle to the compass rose. These are tied internally to the binding posts on the right leg.



I've connected a simple series circuit with two drycells and a voltmeter, showing when the needle makes contact. (Not running the full circle here, because the rest would be repetitive.) These ticks could be used to activate a buzzer, but they would be more suitable as drivers for a time-marker pen on a chronograph.

= = = = =

The more interesting pair is the inner pair. Two brushes pass over a short pair of 'mesas' on the insulated turntable. The outer mesa (which is adjustable) leads to the outer binding post on the south leg, and the inner mesa to the inner binding post. When BOTH brushes are contacting BOTH mesas, current passes between the binding posts. Again I'm using a simple series arrangement so the voltmeter shows when the pulse is on.

The outer mesa can slide both ways to vary the pulse length. When it's more southward, the area of overlap is narrower, so the pulses are narrower. The difference isn't impressive, but this seems to be a realistic representation of the difference in the real rheotome.




The 1848 Pike catalog describes the use of the Magnetic Machine thusly:

It may be used agreeably, and with much effect, by the patient holding one of the conductors, and another person the other conductor, and with the other hand making passes over or around the diseased part. This is particularly useful about the head, and where the pain is under the hair it should be thoroughly wet, to have the effect pass through it. The best effects have followed from regular applications of a mild power, from five to fifteen minutes, twice or more a day. The machine may be used with confidence, no injury being known to result from its use.

And the machine was used with confidence! Happystar's waves are resync'd, back in resonance with the universe.

Sounds like the main effect was pulsed static charge, not current through the body. The hand of the healer has always been important in real healing. Modern "medicine" has forgotten it, and in 2020 prohibited all healing entirely.

Labels: Entertainment, Equipoise, Happy Ending

  ¶ 3:37 PM

  Who discovered electrotherapy?
Who first discovered electrotherapy, now being discredited (yet again) by Elon?

I've been wrong. It wasn't Americans or Brits or Krauts in the 1880s.

It was NIGERIANS!



Transcribed:

On the river Old Calabar, the electrical properties of the gymnotus are used by the natives to cure their sick children; a small specimen of the fish is put into a dish containing water, and the child is made to play with it, or the child is put into a tub of water and the fish put in beside it.

From History of Electrical Telegraphy, p203 of the PDF.


I'd love to find out how those folks determined the curative effects. They wouldn't have gone through the process of instrumental measurement and theoretical speculation. Why did they try the experiment in the first place? Did adults notice that they felt better after a mild shock?

The author is JJ Fahie, a British engineer who spent much of his career setting up a telegraph system in Persia in the 1860s. He had more experience and respect for non-Euros than the typical British scholar or engineer. I'm trying to trace down the vague source he gave for this info, but so far no luck.

Labels: Morsenet of Things

  ¶ 3:39 PM

  Science WAS entertainment before Darwin
Trying to find a detail of an old electrotherapy device, ran into this perfectly wonderful 1856 catalog from a NYC science supply company.

The cover page shows the building on bustling and bustled Broadway:



[Picture may contain: 4 people and 1 dog, all with their tails up]**

Benjⁿ Pike J^r was an optician, and his primary product was microscopes. The catalog includes a lengthy and useful discussion of gathering and preparing specimens, including what to look for and where to look.

Here's what Pike thought of design vs random:

Equivocal or spontaneous generation, that is, the production of plants without seeds, and of living creatures without any other parents but accident and putrefaction; such was the absurd opinion that prevailed of the production of the minute living creatures, before the microscope overturned it, by demonstrating that all plants have their seeds, and all animals their eggs, whence the same species are produced. Nothing seems more contrary to reason, than to suppose that chance should give being to regularity and beauty, or that it should create living animals, fabricate a brain, nerves, and all the parts of life; and we may as well suppose that the woods generate stags and other animals that inhabit them, as that a cheese generates mites without the egg.

THE MICROSCOPE OVERTURNED RANDOMNESS.

This was written just three years before Darwin brought Spontaneous Generation back into fashion. Note the clear logic:

Nothing seems more contrary to reason, than to suppose that chance should give being to regularity and beauty, or that it should create living animals, fabricate a brain, nerves, and all the parts of life.

Modern school textbooks still make fun of the idea that each individual creature could generate spontaneously, and then declare as an absolute unarguable axiom that each species must have generated spontaneously, and life itself must have generated spontaneously.

The growth of animals and vegetables seems to be nothing more than a gradual unfolding of their parts till they obtain their full size. Though water, by merely standing a few days, will be found to contain them, yet they will not be found in any degree so numerous as when vegetable bodies have been steeped therein, for no living creatures seem to subsist upon water alone; but when it is stored with their proper food, myriads may be found in every drop, of the greatest variety in their forms: some are round, some oblong, and others spherical, and the greatest part of them transparent: motion seems to be their greatest delight; they pervade with ease and the greatest rapidity the whole dimensions of the drop of water, in which they find ample space; sometimes they dart forwards, and at others more obliquely; then again in a circle, and though hundreds may be seen in a single drop, yet they never strike against one another.

Motion is their greatest delight. These are LIVING THINGS with purpose and emotion.

They differ in their size; some are barely visible to the eye; some so minute as to resist the action of the microscope, and appear only as moving points; of this description is the monus; it is so extremely delicate and transparent, as some times to elude the highest magnifying power.

Monus? Google doesn't find it at all. The word is clear in the printed book, but I wonder if the typesetter was misreading a handwritten manuscript, like nonims. The two words contain the same confusable letters.

Aha. Monas, not monus. That was easy.

= = = = =

Most of the catalog is aimed at schools and performers, especially magicians. Magic overlaps medicine, with the same devices serving both purposes.

Air balloons. Note the French flag.


An alarm bell as a demonstrating toy, not as an EMERGENCY WARNING.


Simultaneous demo of battery action and electromagnetism.


Simultaneous demo of thermocouples and electromagnetism.


Not clear how this worked, but it must have been dramatic. Lockey also designed a component of an electrotherapy device, which is what steered me into this catalog. Magic<->Medicine.


Magnetic toys.


Demo of a monostable multivibrator.


Finally, here's an item that fits into my earlier suggestion about useful modern science fun... and it's also a liquid bridge.


= = = = =

** Tailnote: How the hell did ladies SIT in those outfits? Needless to say, Youtube provides the answer, and it's amazing. The bustle wasn't a pillow, it was a complex and collapsible mechanism. As the above picture suggests, the hoop skirt protected ladies against both dogs and wolves.


= = = = =

Continued in Part 2, focusing on the Magnetic Machine.

Labels: Entertainment, Equipoise

  ¶ 8:21 AM

  Shepardson yet again
I've been wondering if anyone tried to use the 'Shepardson effect' for practical purposes. Probably shouldn't credit Shepardson for the idea ... he was just writing about it ... but it doesn't seem to have a proper name, so this will do. Name aside, the theory is simple: plants use ionized air for energy. Seems most plausible with conifers, since their needles are obviously built as charge catchers, not sunlight catchers.

Here's a 1909 article about an experiment with cabbage and other crops on farms near Dayton. One of the farms belonged to Ohio Gov James Cox, who later ran for president in 1920. The experiment was apparently succeeding, but we don't know what happened afterward. Not enough success? Too expensive? Suppressed by more 'conventional' ag interests?



Must admit the picture caught my eye before I noticed the Shepardson connection! The pipe-smoking colored gentleman with sleeve garters illustrates a fact that modern idiots like to ignore: there has always been a distinguished black middle class. Was he Mr E.A. Deeds, mentioned in the text? The caption doesn't specify.

= = = = =

Static fields also showed benefit when applied to humans. This was one form of Electrotherapy, a solidly experimental branch of medicine that was discredited by the pill-pushers in the 20th century and now returns under different names. Turns out the electrotherapists were mainly correct.

Polistra and Happystar have already demonstrated the power of point-to-point current, which the electrotherapists called 'Faradic therapy'. The newer Faradic devices use names like TCDS and TENS to maintain the pretense of new discovery.

Now we'll show the 'Franklinic' or static field. Polistra is suffering from vapors and miasmas, and she happens to find an Electrotherapy clinic.......



Mr Star describes the difference between the Faradic and Franklinic machines.



He recommends the Franklinic, and Polistra gets hooked up. The high-voltage field is applied without direct contact, between the 'crown' headpiece and the ground platform:



= = = = =

Artistic note for Poser types: I've released these machines on ShareCG.

Labels: 20th century Dark Age

  ¶ 5:14 AM

  Undiscovered and rediscovered forever
While looking for the source of the Nigerian electrotherapy info in previous item, I bumped into another example of the discredit/reinvent pattern.

This is from an 1825 volume of American Mechanics Magazine, p95 of the PDF.



This method has gone in and out of fashion repeatedly. Every time it comes back into fashion, it's heralded as a new discovery.

New or not, it's always right. Rhythmic movement helps not just stuttering but all sorts of neurological 'unsyncings' including Tourettes. As I get older I'm having occasional bouts of vestibular problems, and I notice the same rule. On days when the semicircular canals are frisky, walking settles them down. This even applies to moods. Walking is the simplest cure for depression and anxiety.

We're meant to be steadily moving and making all the time, except when sleeping.

Labels: coot-proofing, defensible times, Grand Blueprint, TMI

  ¶ 12:52 AM

  Same "theory" works here
Let's extend the "theory" that Elon is a false flag working for Big Oil to discredit EVs.

I hadn't paid attention to his other fakeries. This week he announced that Neuralink is going to cure epilepsy. Again he's trying to disrupt an industry that has been running SUCCESSFULLY for quite a while. Pacemakers and synchronizers have been used for about 40 years, connecting to hearts and spines and various parts of the brain. Lots of people have them, and they work beautifully in most cases. These devices control pain, prevent atrial fibrillation, relieve dystonia and Parkinsons, and stop seizures.

The EV industry was HARMED, not helped, by Elon's poor quality and deadly autopilot.

The DBS industry will be equally HARMED, not helped, by Elon's poor quality, which will be even more massively deadly in this application. Elon's unique superpower that makes him invulnerable to regulators will give him the opportunity to kill without punishment or liability.

At this point the important question is WHO IS PAYING HIM to ruin the DBS/TENS industry? History helps. Electrotherapy was a productive technique from 1880 to 1920, when the Freudians and pill-pushers tinfoiled it and redefined it as quackery. It came back around 1980, and is now a productive and profitable industry again. History is periodic. 1980 to 2020. Cui bono for this phase? Look at the same culprits.

Disrupters are NOT innovators. Disrupters are the exact opposite. Their sole purpose is to stop natural steady EXPERIENCE-BASED innovation, kill millions of people, and obliterate civilization. Instead of joining their cults, we should ask who is paying them to destroy the universe.

Labels: $TSLAQ, 1901

  ¶ 6:27 AM

  Really dumb idea
This has to be the dumbest health policy idea since Romneycare.

Precisely because it is so hard to regulate and prevent the spread of these pseudo-scientific non-treatments, we should be cracking down on one of their lucrative revenue streams by ending the tax-free status of workplace benefits plans that cover them. People should, at the very least, have to pay tax on pseudo-scientific treatments covered by their benefits plans.

Basic problem: The usual definition of "pseudoscientific" is totally independent of actual science. It's purely a matter of fashion and status and grants.

Electrotherapy (magnetic fields or passing current through the body) was normal and mainstream from 1840 to 1920, then pseudoscientific quackery from 1920 through 1980, now normal and mainstream again. Psychiatry has been totally and definitively disproved from the start, but it continues to be "scientific" because the Tribe owns it. Diet advice switches back and forth at a dizzying pace. A doctor who tells you to avoid fat is "scientific" today, "pseudo" tomorrow, "scientific" the next day.

What happens if you tax a bad treatment for a while, then "learn" that the same treatment is now good and necessary? Do you refund the taxes from the bad time? Conversely, do you retroactively tax a treatment that has switched from necessity to quackery?

Labels: Loughnerian Logic

  ¶ 2:48 AM

  Did Nature get there first?
Thinking about the painted ckt as an active tattoo....

Did Nature get there first?

First thing that occurs to me is the licking habits of dogs and other mammals. When a mama dog licks her baby, or a dog licks an injury on another animal, is the saliva laying down a conductor to aid growth or healing? We know from electrotherapy that currents can help healing.





Partial and unsatisfying answer. There's a firm connection between saliva conductivity and ovulation. It's well known and forms part of a natural family planning method called 'CUE'. This article seems to answer the question about conductivity changes after birth, but the full text is behind a paywall.

How about actual tattoos? Black ink would be conductive, I'd think. Lamp black. Other colors, maybe not. Does a broken bone heal faster in a tattooed arm?

How about masseurs? Have they found that using a high-carbon or high-conductivity oil works better? Nothing at all from the web. I remembered that I have a sample of 'aromatherapy oil' which may not be the same as massage oil, though it certainly smells wonderful.



Tried a quick semi-scientific experiment. Brushed a strip of this oil onto a piece of paper, (dark strip in center) then licked a similar strip on the right and used a sponge to put plain water on a similar strip to the left. Checking with ohmmeter (pointy probes, about an inch apart) showed about 6K resistance for saliva, 40K for the plain water, and no conductivity at all for the oil. I tried over and over, with probes nearly touching, pushing hard into the surface. Open circuit all the way. If this is the same sort of oil masseurs use, I think they're missing a bet. Saliva is 4 times more conductive than water. Nature does things for a reason.

If a masseur is reading this, try infusing some graphite powder or wood ash (close to pure carbon) into your oil and see what happens.

Labels: Asked and sort of answered, Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 9:07 AM

  Salute to Leeds and Northrup, part 2: Vreeland.
Following from Leeds and Northrup part 1.

Lately I've been studying and animating some old devices that followed the liquid soft analog path instead of the dry hard digital path. The dry path didn't win a decisive victory until around 1960.

Wet electronics came before dry. The first telegraphs used potential difference from wet batteries to form visible streams of electrolysis bubbles, one wire for each letter.



Electrolysis is messy, so it receded quickly from everyday use into lab use.

Rehashing a couple of the wet devices, including both clocks and electronics:

The magnificent incomparable Ridhwan water clock, around 1200 AD:



Electrolytic voltmeters:



The Tiffereau water-escapement clock:



The Lukyanov water computer used water pressure to simulate graphs of various functions.



= = = =

Now we look at a Leeds and Northrup product that combined several of those techniques into a truly weird-looking machine. Weird or not, this machine occupied a unique position for 20 years, performing one important task better than anything else.

The Vreeland Oscillator was invented in 1906 (of course) and used into the '30s, long after dry vacuum tube circuits were highly sophisticated. Experimenters and metrologists agreed that Vreeland's output was significantly more stable and pure than any other variable oscillator available at the time. Tuning forks for audio freqs and crystals for radio freqs were more stable, but they weren't variable.



Here's the real thing as seen in the LN catalog. This is the only available picture, with no labels or side views, so I had to make several (probably unfounded) assumptions about the various controls. The knife switches on top clearly switch in the igniter cathode and oscillating anodes. Rotary switches probably vary the resistances. The 'radiator' and the big handle on the left are more mysterious. The radiator might be the capacitor because it looks like a pair of plates, and the handle might move the radiator in and out to adjust the spacing. But the description says that the capacitor is inside the box, so this explanation is dubious.

[** See correction below.]

The essential parts are a mercury vapor tube sandwiched between two inductors that pull the arc in opposite directions. The tube is hard to see in the catalog illustration.



The tube itself has a cathode that emits electrons, two anodes that alternately attract electrons, and an igniter cathode that is energized briefly with higher voltage to get the pool of mercury heated into vapor.



= = = = =

Vreeland was essentially a lightning pendulum.

A lightning stroke forms a complicated and wildly indirect path, then repeats the path several times. The path is indirect because it jumps from one air molecule to another, finding the nearest available molecule at each jump. The nearest is rarely on a direct line to the ground. After ionizing those sections of air, the discharge is able to take the same path repeatedly until wind moves the air around. Like clearing a curvy road to avoid hills and property lines, then reusing the road.

By contrast, a discharge in a vacuum will always take the shortest path from negative to positive. Each electron is pulled in the same direction, and has no reason to detour into more favorable zones. There are no hills or property lines in a vacuum, and no road to reuse. Paths start instantly and end instantly.

The direct predecessor of the Vreeland is the coherer, another lightning-style device. Coherers detect faint radio waves by creating a conductive path through metal powder:



Vreeland created a cohering path in mercury vapor, forming a pendulum with escapement.



A clock pendulum uses the resonance of a heavy weight, swinging in a restricted range, to maintain frequency. At each endpoint of the range, the escapement skips to the next tooth on the drive gear, giving a small burst of energy to the pendulum. The drive gear is pulled by a steady weight or spring.

Vreeland uses the smooth shifting of the mercury-vapor lightning between anodes as the pendulum, and the time constant of a capacitor through a resistance as the weight. A capacitor never sends steady DC; it allows a single push or pull then stops.



The arc shifts back and forth between the anodes, pulled by the sandwich coils. Each change of conduction then triggers the sandwich coils to reverse their magnetic field, and gives a brief burst of electrons into the resonating parts. Result: oscillation.

What was actually happening in the wires and resistors and capacitors? Oddly, we have better detail on this level, thanks to a thesis written in 1920 by Arthur Aardal. He drew a number of useful schematics and explained how the various parts moved back and forth. Here's a simplified version, treating the two arcs in the tube as a relay that switches back and forth under the influence of the two sandwich coils.



The DC power supply always sends electrons upward from ground to positive. The electrons take different paths on the opposite sides of the cycle. On one side they flow upward through the left branch, then clockwise into the capacitor. On the other half of the cycle electrons flow upward through the right branch, then push counterclockwise into the capacitor.

Finally, the output was taken from the separate secondary coil, which could slide forward and backward to change amplitude, and turn to change phase. (I'm animating the motions here, but in reality they would be set once and left alone.) Thus the output audio was completely AC and completely isolated from the high-current arc.



Polistra is using the Vreeland as the source of AC for a conductivity test, identical to the first Leeds and Northrup setup except for the oscillator. Vreelands were used extensively for this type of work, and also for medical electrotherapy because of the clean waves and total isolation.

= = = = =

Frederick King Vreeland, the inventor, was clearly trying to establish an entire wet branch of electronics. He patented a number of wet coherers. Later he seems to have surrendered to the dry trend, patenting several ordinary receiver circuits using ordinary vacuum tubes. It's hard to find info on Frederick King Vreeland online because an entirely different Frederick Dalziel Vreeland, son of Diana Vreeland, went into Deepstate politics and left a much broader trail of ionization. I haven't found any biographical info on the correct Frederick Vreeland, only his patents and devices plus a few speeches at electrical conventions. The two Fredericks might be distantly related, but they're not father and son.

= = = = =

** Correction on the 'radiator'. Found it accidentally when looking for other things. It's a high-current rheostat or resistance selector, to vary the main 110 V input. The lever doesn't go in and out, it's pivoted at the bottom and goes back and forth across the hefty resistors.



Here it's part of an electric furnace, found on p538 of an Arthur Thomas scientific apparatus catalog.

= = = = =

Continued in part 3.

Labels: Equipoise, Metrology

  ¶ 12:16 AM