A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



lieb Kriiger, a professor of medicine at Halle in 1743, 

 suggested that electricity might be of use in some 

 branches of medicine ; and the year following Christian 

 Gottlieb Kratzenstein made a first experiment to de- 

 termine the effects of electricity upon the body. He 

 found that "the action of the heart was accelerated, 

 the circulation increased, and that muscles were made 

 to contract by the discharge": and he began at once 

 administering electricity in the treatment of certain 

 diseases. He found that it acted beneficially in rheu- 

 matic affections, and that it was particularly useful in 

 certain nervous diseases, such as palsies. This was 

 over a century ago, and to-day about the most im- 

 portant use made of the particular kind of electricity 

 with Vhich he experimented (the static, or frictional) 

 is for the treatment of diseases affecting the nervous 

 system. 



By the middle of the century a perfect mania for 

 making electrical machines had spread over Europe, 

 and the whirling, hand-rubbed globes were gradually 

 replaced by great cylinders rubbed by woollen cloths 

 or pads, and generating an "enormous power of elec- 

 tricity." These cylinders were run by belts and foot- 

 treadles, and gave a more powerful, constant, and sat- 

 isfactory current than known heretofore. While mak- 

 ing experiments with one of these machines, Johann 

 Heinrichs Winkler attempted to measure the speed at 

 which electricity travels. To do this he extended a 

 cord suspended on silk threads, with the end at- 

 tached to the machine and the end which was to at- 

 tract the bits of gold - leaf near enough together so 

 that the operator could watch and measure the in- 



278 



