JOHANN GOTTLOB KRUGER. 5OI 



these flings did it in a curious way. His name was Johann 

 Gottlob Kriiger, of Halle, a doctor and professor of philos- 

 phy and medicine; and his medium, an address delivered 

 in the fall of 1743, to his students who had asked him 

 to explain his views concerning possible utilizations of 

 electricity. It is witty, prophetic, and pre-eminently the 

 utterance of a sage, whose philosophy is indicated by his 

 epigram that the philosopher's life consists in u trying to 

 understand what you do not see, and not believing what 

 you do. " "What's the use of bugs, fleas and grasshop- 

 pers?" he demands, exemplifying the usual resentment of 

 the closet student, yet in the next breath repeating, "God 

 only knows what the ingenious heads of our time will get 

 out of 'it all." "It is too early," he says, "even to try to 

 venture explanations or predictions." But he believes 

 curious prescience that the "Germans have laid the 

 foundation, the English will erect the building, and the 

 French will add the decorations." And as to what utiliza- 

 tions of electricity there may be in store, " if it must have 

 some practical use, it is certain, that none has been found for 

 it in Theology or Jurisprudence, and therefore where else 

 can the use be than in Medicine?" 



Here begin the modern efforts to apply electricity to the 

 curing of human ills. Not magnetism, for that, as we have 

 seen, was used therapeutically at periods of remote anti- 

 quity; but with Kriiger apparently starts the idea that 

 electricity can be beneficially employed^in the healing art. 



It was one fraught with especial difficulties at the time, 

 because of the imperfection of the electrical machine, 

 which was then nothing more than a globe, or possibly 

 two or three globes, of glass, seldom provided with Bose's 

 prime conductor, and excited by the contact of the opera- 

 tor's dry palm. Nevertheless, Kriiger urges his students 

 to investigate. He has heard it rumored that certain elec- 

 trified bodies will not decay because they attract only 

 "balsamic vapors" from the air. The "true human 

 body," he says, "is not electric of itself, nor can it be 



