You're Dead to Me - Vital Electricity

Episode Date: March 3, 2023

Greg Jenner is joined by guests Prof Iwan Rhys Morus and comedian Olga Koch in the 17th century to learn all about "vital electricity". From elaborate party tricks to questionable medicinal claims, we’ll explore the downright bizarre ways that the force of electricity has been harnessed and developed throughout the years.Research by Roxy Moore Written by Emma Nagouse, Roxy Moore and Greg Jenner Produced by Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner Assistant Producer: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow Project Management: Isla Matthews Audio Producer: Steve HankeyYou’re Dead To Me is a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we're going to rock down to Electric Avenue and then we'll go inquire, by which I mean we'll be zapped back to the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries in America and Europe

to supercharge our knowledge of the history of electricity, or rather, vital electricity, to be precise. And joining me to do that are two Livewire guests. In History Corner, he's Professor of History at the University of Aberystwyth, is an expert on the history and culture of Victorian science and electricity. You may have read some of his stimulating research in one of his many books, including Shocking Bodies, Life, Death and Electricity in Victorian England. It's Professor Ewan Rees-Morris. Welcome, Ewan. Thanks very much, Greg. It's a pleasure to be here.

And in Comedy Corner, she's a comedian, writer and actor who you will have seen on top telly shows like Mock the Week, QI, Frankie Boyle's New World Order and Late Night Mash. She's also an award-winning writer and performer of various audio shows, including Fight, Homecoming, OK Computer and the BBC technology podcast Human Error. And you'll certainly remember her for our episode on Ivan the Terrible. It's Olga Koch. Welcome back, Olga. The chemistry is electric. Olga, you're Russian born, but you went to an American high school. And you said previously your historical education was limited to basically American presidents. But you have a degree

in computer science. You are a clever clogs. I know you host a technology podcast, so I'm guessing this is in your wheelhouse. I feel like you're giving me too much credit. Do you use electricity? Are you familiar with it on a daily basis? I use electricity every day, but as far as I know, it works by magic and magnets, and I will not be proven otherwise. So what do you know? This is where I guess what you, our lovely listener, might know about the history of vital electricity. And I'm adding the word vital in there because it's important.

And the fact you are listening to this podcast means congratulations, you've experienced electricity firsthand. Hooray. But what do you know about how electricity came to be understood as a natural force? And you've possibly heard of the big names. That's your Thomas Edison, your Joseph Swan, your Michael Faraday, your Nikola Tesla. Not only did their inventions still shape the world today, they've inspired countless films and TV series and band names, ACDC, songs, books, indeed Elon Musk. Tesla now, of course, is a brand of electric car. But that's not what we're focusing on today. No, we are throwing out all the classic normal stuff, and we're going to be talking about vital electricity. So let's plug in, switch on, and see how many terrible electricity puns I can cram into one episode.

I'm buzzing already. Off we go. Right, Olga, what do you think we mean by vital electricity? Oh, man, you're setting me up for failure here. Not at all. I'm gauging the level. I'm trying to find, you know, if it's a phrase that has any kind of frame of reference for you. I'm going to throw out that it's maybe like naturally occurring, that it's like organic, but I have no idea. Like whole foods electricity.

Yeah, exactly. Not battery farmed. Like whatever lightning is. I mean, have we got a sort of simple way of defining vital electricity? It's meant to be the stuff that runs in our nerves, makes our bodies work. It's the answer to how the mind talks to the body. It's vital electricity. It's the electricity of life. That's what it is.

Oh, I like that. That's good. That's a t-shirt logo, the electricity of life. So we're not talking about light bulbs. We're not talking about magnets, particularly today. We are talking about how electricity was discovered and understood as part of organic life. So you were right, Olga. Organic was right. So it's the electricity that turns on the light bulb when you have an idea. Exactly. Yes, exactly.

The one above your head that goes, bing! And, I mean, Olga, again, a difficult question. Do you know where electricity comes from? A stork brings it. Mummy and daddy have a special cuddle and then a stork brings them. No, I mean the word. Do you know where the word electricity comes from? The etymology of it.

Does it have to do with electrons? It's linked. Or elektra from like mythology. Oh, interesting. That's a good guess. It's a Greek mythology. Eoin, have we got an etymological history here? I mean, that's not actually that far off, really.

The word electricity does indeed come from ancient Greek. It's the ancient Greek word for amber, which is electron. The association's there because Greek philosophers, Thales and Miletus in particular, realised that if you kind of rub a piece of amber, then something weird happens to it. Think of those kind of children's party games with balloons, when you kind of rub a balloon of amber, then something weird happens to it. Think of those kind of children's party games with balloons when you kind of rub a balloon on your shoulder. It attracts bits of fluff and feathers and stuff like that. Well, that's what happens when you rub amber. It's what we would call static electricity. You should always ask for consent when you rub amber. And electric fish as

well, of course. I mean, the Greeks and the Romans. I mean, Pliny, for example, talks about electric fish, electric eels. And they even reckon that you can cure various kinds of diseases by playing around with electric eels and giving yourself a little jolt. Yeah. I mean, we talked about this in a previous episode on the history of ancient medicine. There are a few diseases you could be treated with an electric eel. A torpedo fish, I think think was the particular species. They recommended it for gout, headaches. And do you want to guess the third medical condition, Olga?

Migraines? Migraines. Yeah, migraines is absolutely right. Is it migraines? Yeah! But the less charming one, but apparently actually quite a good one, was hemorrhoids. They would zap you on the bum with an electric eel. And then apparently that helped. Sounds like an excuse. I'm sorry. Sounds like someone just wanted to put something up their butt.

I'm really sorry. You can check out the episode on BBC Sounds. But when it comes to the ancients, they are fascinated by electricity. They can't quite figure out what it is. They're also really fascinated by thunderstorms and lightning. They're drawn to it, but they can't quite understand it. So they call it electricity because basically they named it after amber, after the sun, the colour of the sun.

But we're going to jump forward now to the 17th century, to the 1600s, because here we get an English physician called William Gilbert, who publishes his book called De Magnete, which means on the magnet, which was all about static electricity. And then in 1646, we get Sir Thomas Brown, who becomes the first person to use the word electricity in the English language. For him, a piece of amber gemstone, amber again, was anelectric. So it was an object, and that meant that it had attractive properties.

So in the 17th century, electricity meant something that was magnetised, I suppose, or attracted. And then in 1663, we have shockwaves through the scientific community with the accidental invention of the first electrostatic generator by Otto von Gericke in Germany. What's an electrostatic generator? It's typically a glass globe or jar or glass disc. Basically, you rotate it and if you're von Gericke, you hold a piece of leather up against it. And then you get what we would call static electricity produced

by the rubbing of the leather or the cloth or whatever against the glass. Okay, so the German boffin Otto von Gericke is doing that in 1663. But let's talk about an Englishman called Francis Hawksby and his purple light. This is our first big light bulb moment or rather light ball moment because he's dealing with electroluminescence. Olga, what is electroluminescence? Do you know? OK, so I said this before we started recording, but I'm currently on day four of a New Zealand jet lag. So I don't know where I am or what time it is. a New Zealand jet lag, so I don't know where I am or what time it is. But while I was in New Zealand, I went to a glowworm cave where the worms were glowing with bioluminescence. So I know what that is. And that's when something glows and it is a thing, like a natural thing. I'm assuming

fireflies are also bioluminescence? And whatever avatar is also bioluminescent. So that's the science I know. So electroluminescence would mean that something glows because of electricity? Professor? Pretty much. Yes. And it's all down to our friend Francis Hawksby. Hawksby ran about the beginning of the 18th century. He's hired by the Royal Society of London for the improving of natural knowledge, aka the Royal Society, to be their experimentalist.

He's working under Sir Isaac Newton, the president, which is not necessarily a good place to be. And his job essentially is to produce cool experiments, for lack of a better word, for the Royal Society's weekly get-togethers. So he's on the lookout for spectacular things to do. It's basically an air pump. So he's rotating it. Because it's an air pump, it's been evacuated. There's a vacuum inside. And he notices that if you do the usual producing static electricity thing, rubbing a piece of leather or cloth or whatever against it, then you start getting a bluish purplish light where the leather is kind of touching the glass globe. It's another party trick. I mean, it's a way of showing off God's powers in nature, because that's really what all of these guys think. I mean, all of these forces like electricity and

magnetism and heat and light aren't intrinsic to matter. They're given to matter by God. So when you're making electricity visible, nice glow in the dark, then that's God's power you're showing off. And that's why spectacle is so important. Wow. Okay, so a bluey purple light is God in the room. Pretty much. Wow. Hawksby's quite an interesting guy, because we have Sir Isaac Newton as the president of the Royal Society, who is your classic mega-boffin gentleman scientist. But Hawksby's kind of ordinary, isn't he, Ewan? Hawksby's a mechanic. He's a worker. He's an assistant.

And the Royal Society, the raison d'etre of the Royal Society, this is a society of gentlemen. Because for reasons that you will find deeply confusing, only gentleman says the gentleman can produce true knowledge. So yeah, people like Hawksby or Robert Hook, what should we say? They have an ambivalent relationship with the gents because they think that they're making knowledge too, but they're not gents. They're workers. They're people who muck around, do things with their hands. They're assistants. They're mechanics. They're the guys actually make things work. I think he'd previously been in drapery, I think, hadn't he? I think he sort of comes to science in middle age, which is quite extraordinary.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of these guys, they start off as apprentices, they work in particular trades, and move towards the production of these interesting snazzy instruments. That's another way of making money, really harrison ford he used to be a carpenter yes absolutely harrison ford i mean he he was what in his 30s as a carpenter and then he became a movie star yeah and hawksby's got as you said his gig is to entertain people kind of every week he's basically a comedian olga he's got to get new material every every wednesday and do a new show what i've learned so far is that men love getting together and rubbing one out. Spot on. So yeah, a lot of pressure for Hawksby, but he is performing these things, the electroluminescence, the blue, the purple,

that's God in the room. And this is very early in the 1700s. So he's sort of around in 1705, I think he's doing this, 1706, I think. And we get other sort of gentleman scientists, natural philosophers is the term they're not really scientists yet they're philosophers still we get stephen gray there's a fantastically named frenchman called charles francois de cisterne dufay what a name and george bose they're all adding to the electrical research and what updates are they popping in the whatsapp group chat what's going? The key thing is that Grey in particular shows that the electricity doesn't just kind of stay on your glass globe, that the electricity

can be conducted away and used elsewhere, so to speak. So you can have a piece of metal attached to the globe and that carries the electricity away. Or Grey's favourite, you can have a child. You can have a little boy suspended in the air. And if the boy's feet are touching the globe that's producing the electricity, then at the other end, his hands, I mean, his hand will kind of attract the feathers and fluff or whatever it is that they're playing around with. They discover you can electrify water. Don't try that at home.

It's not a really good idea. They think there are two kinds of electricity, vitreous and resinous. That's produced by glass, produced by amber. I mean, all kinds of debates around this, but I mean, what is this stuff? Is it one thing? Is it two things? How do you make sense? And how do you produce nice, interesting effects to wow the room? Although you visibly recoiled when you and said a small boy was suspended from the ceiling i can't that's such hands-on parenting they weren't his children that's even worse these were orphan boys. Oh my God. Oh no. No. No. Did they know what they were signing up for?

These poor kids. Stand there. Hold that. Who's like, we discovered this thing. What should we try it on? I don't know. Water? A baby?

Like what list? What kind of list is that? So we have gentlemen gathered around watching children being electrocuted and water being electrocuted. This sounds very dangerous. But as you say, there are discoveries being made and the ability to conduct it away from the glass is kind of fascinating. And actually glass is an interesting point because we then get the discovery of how to store electricity.

I mean, where do you keep your electricity, Olga? Our lady never tells. Sorry for asking. Obviously, we have batteries and so on, but at this stage in the early 1700s, you're keeping it in literally in glass jars, like it's jam. How does electricity go in a jar, Ewan? Have I misunderstood? No, you haven't misunderstood at all. By and large, electricity is a fluid. That's what these guys reckon. So I mean, where else are you going to keep the fluid of a van in a jar? A Leiden jar,

as they come to call it, it's a capacitor, basically. It's a way of storing electric charge. And various experimenters at more or less the same time, von Kleist, Muschenbroek, Knaus, all these different guys, pretty much around about the same time, realised that you can use jars to store electricity. So you attach sort of the inside of the jar to your electrical machine. You crank it up. You're generating the electricity. So you crank it by hand? You probably don't.

Your servant does, I suspect. Your small boy from the orphanage. Yeah, sure. It's quite hard work. And in that way, you build up the charge, you build up the charge, and then you can, so to speak, let it go. And again, it's not what you might call a safe occupation, particularly since you don't really know how much electricity you've added to the jar.

We're talking in modern terminology thousands potentially really volts so if you kind of idly touch it at the wrong moment then there will be a frying sound i thought it would be because it's sort of hand cranked i thought it would be like 20 volts and you'd get a sort of light buzz and you go oh no you've got to be quite careful with those lighting jars you need oh wow i mean there were fatalities when kind of overenthusiastic, cranking, so to speak, took place. So, yeah, it's the thing you need to be careful about. But, yeah, now you can store it.

You've got more electricity, which, of course, means you can produce more and more spectacular effects. I mean, Bozer has this fantastic beatification experiment. The process of becoming a saint, he has this hat that his victims wear. And as you crank up electricity, if you've got enough electricity,

then you get that blue glow on the hat. It's kind of like a halo. It's like a saint. Beatification. Now that's where you can start to do if you've got lots and lots and lots of this lovely fluid.

Olga, you're blinking in wonder. I feel, am I? Is this real? None of it makes sense. Because we're talking so much about filling the jar and I'm just waiting for it's like, and then you have your jar of electricity and then you use that electricity too. And then the thing you're risking your life for is for a little hat to show your friends? I'll tell you later about the Venus kiss. You can tell us now about the Venus kiss, maybe, yeah. It's another one of those party tricks. This time you have a young lady.

She's standing on a stool, so she's insulated. She's attached to the electric machine. She's insulated, so the stuff can't flow, so she's attached to the electric machine she's insulated so the stuff can't flow so she's fine until one of the gentlemen kisses her the gentleman question isn't standing on a stool so isn't insulated so literally at that point sparks fly between them that's the venus kiss goodness me have these people tried charades or deviled eggs? Okay, so we have Peter von Muschenberg, who is a professor at Leiden University, and that's where the Leiden jar gets its name. I mean, Olga, if we were going to name a jar after you and put vital fluid in it, what fluid's going in there? Greg.

I didn't write this one. Greg. Oh, man. Every time I come on, it's just various ways to get me to say the word piss. Yes, it is true. Basically, it's a trap. It's a very sort of interesting thing that they are experimenting with these dangerous things. But as Olga says, there's not a huge amount of usefulness at the moment. This is all just sort of experiment for the sake of the thrill of it

and the wonder of it. But we also have a little-known fellow by the name of Benjamin Franklin. Olga, he wasn't an American president, but I suspect he might have snuck onto your curriculum. Do you know about Franklin and his electricity experiments? No, I just know him from money. It's all about the Benjamins. He's famous for his kite experiments, isn't he?

And he's out there in a lightning storm, risking his life. Is there more to this story? Is there more to his research? Franklin is, in all sorts of ways, a key figure in terms of the history of electricity. He's mainly known for flying that kite in a thunderstorm. Again, a great risk to life, limb, and everybody around him. Things men will do instead of going to therapy. The usual stories that Franklin, you know, Franklin's showing that lightning is electricity. Well, I mean, everybody kind of knows that lightning is electricity. What Franklin's doing

is showing that you can draw and direct the lightning in various ways. So you can send it where you want it to. So, for example, away from tall buildings. So ideas about lightning conductors and stuff like that. And he's also engaged in the process of figuring out, well, what is this stuff? Is it two fluids? Is it one fluid?

Franklin argues it's one fluid. Essentially, depending which way it's going, so to speak. It's positive or negative. And very, very famously, this is the greatest thing that Franklin ever does. He shows you can cook your Thanksgiving turkey using electricity. Wow. The meat, he says, is unusually tender when it's cooked by electricity.

Okay, now we're talking. Now that's a party trick. Yeah. Gobble, gobble, baby. I mean, that's really quite extraordinary that he's out there risking life and limb in a thunderstorm with a kite in the sky and lightning flashing around him. And then he's using it to cook his dinner. That's hardcore science. But we also have philosophers zapping each other to see what it does to humans. So already we've heard about a small boy being electrocuted. Okay, can we just come back to the fact that they zapped a boy before they did a turkey?

Well, priorities, priorities, value systems. Turkeys are valuable, Olga, they're expensive. So it doesn't feel like that much care and attention is being paid to the safety of children. But we now have to talk about the safety of monks, because there is a really famous, well, there are several famous experiments, but one of my favourite ones is in France, Ewan, where we get a big public demonstration of how electricity can pass through many people, don't we? This is the Abbe Nollet, a cleric, no less. Jean-Antoine Nollet, professor of physics.

He's doing what all these guys are doing. I mean, he's mucking around with the generators. He's playing around with light and jars, seeing what kind of interesting things you can do. His best performance, so to speak. This is a performance in front of the French king, in front of Louis XV. He lines up 180, I think it is,

royal guardsmen, all in a line, all holding hands. And then the guardsman at the end kind of grabs hold of the chain coming from the generator or a Leiden jar. What happens? They all jump simultaneously. So imagine a line of 180 royal guardsmen holding hands, leaping into the air simultaneously as the jolt passes through them. Nothing deterred. He does it again, just with a bunch of Cartusian monks. 200 monks. He's escalating.

200 Cartusian monks holding hands, jumping into the air simultaneously. There's a lot of interesting iconography going on. This is the age of absolute monarchs. This is the age of kings like Louis XV who think that people should jump exactly when he says jump. And hey, Noller is providing him with a technology that can make people jump exactly when he wants them to jump. Yeah, and it's showing that electricity can pass through people

all the way through and affect all of them. So it's showing that electricity can pass through people all the way through and affect all of them. So it's not just that one man on the end gets shocked. It's all of them are receiving the shock. I mean, I've seen pictures of Regency ladies and gents doing that trick in the comfort of their own drawing rooms. There's somebody cranking up the machine and they're all holding hands going, oh. Life before Game Boys, eh? When I say jump, you say how high voltage. Yeah. You can have that.

Thank you, Olga. I mean, we now get to my favourite of all the electrical experiments, the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, who's a very big deal in Germany. He's not so well known. Humboldt University is after his name. Right. He's basically the German Darwin. Pretty much, yeah. But in the UK, He's not so well known. Humboldt University is after his name. Yeah, right. He's basically the German Darwin. Pretty much, yeah.

But in the UK, he's not so well known here. And I'm going to try and celebrate him now with his finest achievement. In 1790, he put an electrode in his mouth and... It gets better, Olga. It gets better. He put an electrode in his mouth and a cathode, I think it was, or maybe an anode, four inches into his rectum. And then he turned on the power. And Olga, I'd like you to read his description of how that felt, please. You think people in the olden times were so sophisticated.

How come it's okay when he does it, but when I do it, I'm asked to leave the dinner party okay so nauseating cramps and discomforting stomach contractions then abdominal pain of severe magnitude followed by involuntary evacuation of the bladder what struck me more is that by inserting the silver more deeply into the rectum, a bright light appears before both eyes. You panicked us. Waterboarding couldn't get that information out of me. No.

I just, I find it astonishing. He's like, I've electrocuted my rectum, but I'll go further. I need to go more deeply to see what happens to my eyes. Oh, yeah, a bright light. Well, I've already pissed myself, so I might as well go further. Oh, goodness me. I mean, von Humboldt, he's an extraordinary guy, and maybe we'll do an

episode on him one day. But that's one of my favorite things from history ever. So the power of electricity to inflict pain, stomach cramps and all sorts, but it's also starting to be heralded as a cure, as a healing power. We've already had Roman doctors zapping people's bottoms with electric eels and torpedo fishes, but in the 1700s we get electrotherapy, this actual idea. So, Olga, we're going to do a mini quiz. Which of these conditions in the 1700s was not believed to be curable using electricity? Fevers, deafness, blindness, headaches, stopped menstruation, tapeworms, syphilis, kidney stones, haemorrhoids. Which of those was not believed to be cured by electricity? I'm going to say fevers. I'm afraid it was syphilis. All the others were believed to

be, yeah, all the others. So fevers, deafness afraid it was syphilis. All the others were believed to be. Yeah, all the others. So fevers, deafness, blindness, headache, epilepsy, stop menstruation, tapeworms, kidney stones and hemorrhoids. People are zapping away with their light in jars. Yeah, because, OK, with kidney stones, hemorrhoids and tapeworms, it makes sense because there's like objects you're trying to zap. Yeah, sure. Obvious BBC disclaimer here. Please, for the love of God, do not electrocute yourself.

To cure any of these, please go see a doctor. Ewan, what new devices are applying this electrotherapy? Because it's not just people holding Leiden jars now. There's gadgets on the market. Yeah, I mean, certainly by the time you go into the 19th century, we're going into the age of electricity. People are thinking about the future. The future is going to be electrical. So you have electric towels, you have

electric hairbrushes, you have electric chains, you have electric belts, you have electric this, that, and the other. The relationship between some of these gizmos and your actual electricity is kind of tangential at best. I don't think there was anything terribly electrical about the electric towel, for example. But yeah, and the idea is that electricity will cure diseases. I mean, you could even have an electric bath. No water involved. I mean, if there were water involved, then there'd be a very, very brief electric power.

Yeah. The idea is that you bathe yourself in a sense. You're immersed in electricity, in the electric fluid. Right. And it's meant to have all kinds of restorative properties. The notion is that even if electricity isn't the kind of nerve force, then the nerve force is very similar to electricity. So if things ain't working, then a quick jolt of electricity will kickstart faulty systems, shall we say. Okay, electric sandals, electric bandage, electric tooth box.

Don't know what that is. Possibly a toothbrush. Any of these appealing to you, Olga? A hairbrush doesn't sound too bad. What I still can't wrap my head around is that they still don't know what electricity is, and yet their instinct always is to get it as close inside and close to their bodies as they possibly can. And that's just so counterintuitive to me. I mean, everybody thinks that there is some kind of weird, intangible, visceral link between electricity and life.

I mean, that's because of the shock thing, I guess. You know from experience, it does something to you. So, well, maybe that's something good. And for the third time in the podcast, I have to talk about electricity treating hemorrhoids. Oh my God! Because we have something called the Sitzbad, which is invented by George Schmidt in 1784, and that uses electrified hot water to treat your piles, which again, that's water and electricity and a very sensitive part of the body that

it should not be mixing. I'm wincing talking about this. Yeah, don't do that at home. Yeah, absolutely. So there we go. What we've learned is that people in history love to electrocute their arses. But we also have the electropathic belt. This feels slightly less dangerous, but it's very marketed, isn't it? There's merch, there's posters. I think we can show you a poster, Olga. All right.

I'm looking at about four different fonts. Harness electropathic belts. They look like tiny little corsets. Yeah, I was going to say like wrestler's belt. You know when wrestlers win a winner or boxers win a yeah belt or whatever and they get a belt like it's kind of that shape and you wear it around the midriff for weak men for delicate women it's a belt for pussies is what it's what i'm hearing uh closer than you think yeah oh god uh i mean you and what's how electropathic are we talking are these wide up to the mains,

or are they just sort of gently magnetised in a perfectly innocent way? You're spot on. Gentlemen wear electropathic belts. Ladies wear electropathic corsets. There are discs of copper and zinc sewn onto the inside of the belt. And the idea is that basically your body fluids, your sweat, is meant to stimulate an electric current. Spoiler alert, it doesn't work.

I mean, there's no electricity coming out of these things, which is probably just as well. They're meant to cure exhaustion, weakness, stability, indigestion, nervous disorders, I mean, the usual list. Certainly in the advertising aimed at men, there's more than a hint that these are a cure for for impotence what's going on here is that you look much sexier in a belt that makes sense to me the victorians have invented this disease this disease is called spermatorrhea you get spermatorrhea by wanking too much. You're expending nervous

energy. You only have so much nervous power in you. Overuse it, you become weak and languid and listless. You can't get it up. And that's where the electropathic belt comes in. So it's the nofap movement. It's very Instagram advert. No, not November, fab bell December. Okay. So we're talking here about electricity in the boudoir, aren't we? We're talking about electricity as the ability to reinvigorate your sex life, which brings us, I'm very pleased to say, to James Graham.

I don't mean the brilliant modern playwright and screenwriter. I'm talking about the 18th century sexologist, the Scottish charlatan quack, but maybe that's a bit harsh. He had some interesting ideas, but in the 1790s, he becomes a big celebrity. So who is James Graham, Ewan, and what's he up to? You might call him a charlatan. He's got a medical degree. Mind you, quite a few charlatans in the 18th and 19th century had medical degrees. Dr. Oz has a medical degree. Arlington's in the 18th and 19th century had medical degrees. Dr. Oz has a medical degree.

He's a strange individual. He's a vegetarian. The worst. Red flag. He's an opium eater. Okay, that's bad. He thinks you shouldn't wear too much. It's bad for you. And he thinks that sex is therapeutic.

Let's hear him out. Let's hear him out. He does become very famous, briefly. So what is this great claim to fame? This is it. In 1779, he opens his own therapeutic institute. It's the Templum Asculapium Sacrum. It's the temple of health.

He invests a bomb. Something like £10,000. £10,000 at the end of the 18th century is a lot of health. He invests a bomb, something like 10,000 pounds. 10,000 pounds at the end of the 18th century is a lot of money. And he packs the place with electrical machines, lighting jars, conductors. There's an electrical throne, all kinds of stuff. There's an electric bed. There is the celestial bed. Huge. It's 12 foot long, nine foot wide. And if you're having trouble in the procreation department, shall we say, then if you're very, very wealthy, you get to spend the night with whoever it is you wish to procreate with on the celestial bed.

That's meant to do the job. The electric aura, the electric surroundings are meant to kind of properly stimulate you. And there are scantily dressed women hanging around just to kind of add extra titillation, shall we say, to the performance. One of the women who worked there, later famous, as Emma Hamilton, Sir William Hamilton's wife and Lord Nelson's mistress. Okay, so in this palace, how would it feel physically for me to lie on an electric bed? Would I feel like a little current or shock or static or nothing? I'm tempted to say it depends who you were there with. So it depends who you were there with.

There's not much really electrical going on with the electrical bed. All the electrical gadgetry of late 18th century electrical showmanship are there around the bed, so to speak, because that's what electricity looks like in the late 18th century. And by this point, they're also using electricity for like normal stuff like light bulbs, too. It's not. Not with your celestial bed bed that's 18th century what by the time cb harness is mucking around at the end of the 19th century then yes you got light bulbs as well but not in the 18th century we're talking the 17 sort of 80s 1790s so they're a hundred years away from the light bulb what priorities priorities come on you're electrifying a bed before a light bulb? I'm going to lose my mind. I'm losing my mind right now.

I'm so upset. My main takeaway, Ewan, is that the bed is 12 foot long and 9 foot wide. That feels like too much bed. I mean, one wonders who else was there. Sure, right. Okay. All right. So this celestial bed, as as it was called you're surrounded

by the paraphernalia of electricity there's theater there's showmanship there are beautiful women it's to get you in the mood and and in theory it's sort of it's almost placebo effect but the idea is that electricity is coursing around you as you make love to your your wife or whatever and you are trying to get pregnant you're trying trying to have a child. So in some ways, it's sort of fertility treatment. It's kind of fascinating that's happening in the 18th century. They're trying to electrify that baby as soon as humanly possible. James Graham had some interesting ideas. He was quite an early, he believed women should have rights.

He was quite an early, he believed women should have rights. He was quite progressive. And then he unfortunately had a mental health breakdown, ended up forming a cult in which he was the only member and died. So we are talking here about James Graham trying to revive people's sex lives with electricity. But then we get to our Italian physicists and they are trying to revive more than sex lives. They're trying to revive the dead. So it's a sort of Frankenstein-y time. And Ewan, who's the first of the Italian? Because I've called them the Italians because they are all Italian, but who's the first? Okay, Luigi Galvani is the first out into the ring. Galvani, for reasons that are best known himself, is playing around with frog's legs.

He's doing electrical experiments, as you do, and the legs twitch. He says, hmm, what's going on here? Where's the electricity coming from? He decides that he's discovered what he calls animal electricity. So the electricity is being generated inside the frog's legs, and the frog's leg kind of jerking is the sign of electricity being there. The other Italian, Alessandro Volta, turns up. Volta's intrigued. He does similar kind of experiments himself, but he decides that Galvani is wrong. The electricity isn't produced by the frog's legs. The electricity is produced by the contact of the metals. And to prove this,

he produces what we would now call a battery. This is the first battery, invented in 1800. The voltaic pile. You get a zinc disc, a piece of cardboard soaked in acid or something like that, then a copper disc, then repeat the process. That's why it's called a pile. What he wanted to show was that he could produce Galvani's effects with no animals present. And that's the first battery, which turns out to be a hugely useful device for the rest of the 19th century. Others don't quite buy Volta's theory. I've come across one experimenter. I can't remember what he's called. But what he did in response to Walter was produce what I can only really describe as a meat battery.

Oh, wow. I'm listening. So you have a layer of muscle. You have a layer of brain. Then you have your piece of cardboard soaked in blood. Then muscle, brain tissue. You make a big sandwich. And he can show that this gives you electricity.

Like a little human trifle. So yes, electricity. No metals here. So it's not produced by the metals. So big arguments. Where is this electricity coming from? Is it coming from the animals? Is it coming from the battery? Are they the same? Are they different? So, all kinds of mucking around with electricity and bits of flesh and bits of animals and indeed, in due course, bits of human. Crikey. I did not expect meat battery. I mean, we've plumbed some weird depths today, but meat battery feels very Matrix. It feels like that's what the machines are doing to us.

Okay. And I've referenced it lightly, but I'll say it now explicitly. Frankenstein is a novel that's written at this time in history. We're talking the early 1800s. Mary Shelley is very influenced by science and her book is about the resurrection of a human corpse. And she's getting these ideas from science. This stuff is sort of in the ether because we also have a guy called Aldini as well who is playing with body parts.

Sorry, can I say a pun, please? Permission to pun? Permission to pun. Permission granted. Mary Shelley heard meat battery and she invented Frankenstein, the world's first beefcake. Hey! Come on! Okay, thank you.

That's why we book you. Have a good evening. Giovanni Aldini, another Italian. And it's all in the family. Aldini is Luigi Galvani's nephew. So one of the things that he's interested in doing is basically protecting the family name. I mean, nasty old Volta has impugned his uncle's reputation. So Galvani wants to do good.

So he's doing experiments with various body parts. Again, I mean, one of the things he's trying to do is produce electricity with no battery. He's not quite producing meat batteries, but I mean, he's generating electricity from cow's heads. And he wants to show that you can use electricity to at the least reproduce the appearance of life. So he gets to play around with the corpses of electrocuted criminals in Bologna, which is where he's at, which is not ideal because Bologna at this stage is part of, well, it's been conquered by Napoleon, values the French method of execution. Bolognese? Guillotines.

So you're not really going to be able to restore to life a headless criminal. Being a 19th century in 1802, 1803, he comes to London. He's trying to persuade everybody that Uncle Galvani is right. And he gets to carry out experiments on the corpse of the murderer, a guy called George Forster. Because, I mean, he'd nearly been hung. So he was still, all the pieces were present and correct, so to speak. Forster is executed at Newgate. Then he's paraded through the streets to the Royal College of Surgeons, where Aldini is going to carry out

his electrical dissection. So basically hooks him up, cuts open his arms and legs, attaches batteries, the arms kind of leap around, open up his chest. One of the things they're trying to do is see if they can get his heart going. There's some disagreement as to whether or not they can, but kind of very dramatic effects. His jaw quivered, one eye opened, and in the subsequent part of the process, the right hand was raised and clenched,

and the legs and things were set in motion. That's the Times reporter describing what he's seen. And there's no doubt that Shelley knows about this kind of stuff. I don't know how to put myself in that sort of situation of what it must have been like to watch this, Olga, back in 1803, a crowd in a room, to watch a body being electrified like that. It must have been sort of horrific and also thrilling, I guess.

Now people just watch stand-up comedy. The thing that the past hour has taught me is that I am never donating my body to science. It's not happening. No good is going to come of it. I think there's ethical bodies now that sort of stop scientists from doing what they want. But yes, I'm still reading from meat battery, to be honest, Ewan. But from reanimating corpses, let's maybe jump to creating corpses, by which I mean, we're talking here about the electric chair.

You know, we've talked about electricity being discovered, people going, oh, wow, what's this? And shocking themselves. Then they're starting to cure themselves with it. Now they're figuring out what is life? Is life itself electricity? And now they're saying, can we end life with electricity? Because we get to the late 19th century where you have a progressive movement, in theory,

to humanely execute with what becomes the electric chair. And this is a... We can blame a dentist for this, can't we, Ewan? Yes, amongst others, a gentleman by the name of Alfred P. Southwick advocates the use of electricity as a means of execution. And yeah, this is a cutting edge of progress, a scientific, sanitised way of doing away with all that kind of barbarous, hanging people and all that. Yep, this is going to be safe, clean, efficient, scientific killing

using electricity. It's mixed up with all sorts of things. There are big fights going on about ACDC. And yet eventually, New York, of course. Where else but New York would they pass the relevant legislation first? 1890, the first man to be killed by the process that gets to be called electrocution is William Kenler, who'd murdered his common-law wife. With an axe. I mean, you know, he's not a nice man. Yeah, I mean, he wasn't a nice guy. But I mean, what happened to him, on the other hand, wasn't a very nice thing either.

Since it turned out that, no, actually, electrocution wasn't the safe, painless, seamless, scientific way of killing. Basically, he was cooked. There are graphic descriptions in the press. They gave him a jolt. It wasn't enough. So they just kind of cranked it up. And then the descriptions of, his hair is burning.

His skin is crisping. There's a horrible smell. So it was all disgusting and awful and barbaric. And everybody in the press were convinced, okay, that's it. This was a terrible idea. We're not doing that again. But hey, look, no, they're still doing it. More than a century later, they're still doing it. They persevered. And electricity, electrocution, new word entering the vocabulary, became the means of executing criminals in the US by the beginning of the 20th century, really.

Yeah, I think by the 1940s, I think half of all American states have adopted it as the execution method. Even though, you know, the backlash against it, when Kemmler is executed, people are horrified. And yet somehow it becomes accepted. But it's fascinating, isn't it? and yet somehow it becomes accepted. But it's fascinating, isn't it, that that process began with a kind of humane effort to try and execute people kindly and ethically, and actually it had been really horrific. Tell me more about this concept of executing people ethically, Greg.

Yeah, I mean, but that's what the guillotine was for. You know, we've mentioned the guillotine. That was the same thing, the idea of saying, look, you need to be able to end life fast, painlessly. And so a dentist saying, hey, I've got a dentist chair, let's just wire it up with electricity. It's horrifying and it's shocking, but behind it, there's this notion that it can be done cleanly. So we've gone from the Abbot of Nollet, the French cleric zapping monks and soldiers, which is all a bit of fun, to, by the end of the 19th century, the state executing people with electricity. So vital electricity is the story both of life and health, and then also of death.

Final thought, actually, Ewan, before we do the nuance window, but one of the great technological revolutions of the 19th century is the telegraph machine. That's Cook and Wheatstone's machine in Britain and in America. It's Morse, Morse code. This is a huge communication revolution. It's exciting. It's fascinating. You can communicate around the world very, very fast. But again, electricity and vital electricity sort of plays a part in how people understand it. Is that right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, very, very quickly, once telegraph networks start proliferating

from the late 1840s, 1850s onwards, people start developing this kind of fascinating kind of two-way analogy. People describe the telegraph like a nervous system. It's the nervous system of Britain. The headquarters of the electric telegraph company is the great brain that kind of governs the nerve network of the empire. And people use the telegraph analogy to explain how nerves work. Nerves are just like telegraphs. There's a very strong sense in which the Victorians themselves see those kinds of technologies as kind of extending the senses. They fantasize about being able to build machines that will allow you to see things, to transmit vision, as well as sound with a telephone and things like that.

You can make your body better in different sorts of ways through electrical technologies. That's true now with biohacking, isn't it? As a host of a podcast about technology and the internet, Olga, I mean, we're still having these sort of metaphors, aren't we? That kind of the internet is a great brain. Yeah, I think what you're describing about extending the nervous system, I think, rings very true with like the biohacking community and the idea of sort of extending the limits of the human body with technological inventions, like various like mechanical and

electric exoskeletons that people are building for themselves, or like chips that people put into their bodies to open their houses and stuff. mean we like to think that we're incredibly modern and that all of this stuff and all these new questions yeah this is yeah we can do this stuff all the victorians are doing this they're thinking about this stuff more than a century ago so you're saying people are putting their front door key into their body while benjamin franklin was popping his front door key on his kite and popping into the sky so there's not so much difference, is there? Or up his ass. That was Humboldt. Let's all be honest.

Humboldt's the best. I mean, one other name we should mention super quick is Faraday, because he's a very important guy in the history of electromagnetism. And he comes along and goes, LHC is not a fluid. It's a force. He's an interesting guy in his own right. Maybe we'll do an episode on him one day. But we do have lots and lots of big superstars by the late 19th century. Your Teslas, your Edisons, your Westinghouses, your Swans.

And maybe we'll come back to those. But the idea of vital electricity is such an interesting part of history. And it's full of big shocks. The nuance window! The nuance window! It's time now for us to close the circuit on this conversation and for Professor Ewan to give us his nuance window. So this is where Olga and I recharge. You're welcome.

While Professor Ewan gets two uninterrupted minutes to tell us what we need to know about today's subjects. And Ewan, you're going to tell us about how vital electricity was politicised. Two minutes on the clock. Take it away. Like everything, it's all about politics, certainly in the 18th century. Remember, I said one of the things that Newtonians think they're doing is by showing off electricity, they're showing that God is in the room. Well, that actually matters politically, because if God is in the room, God is kind of ticking the box. And yes, the political system that we have right

now is the right one, because God wouldn't allow it otherwise. So it's electricity for the status quo. And then you have Joseph Priestley, nonconformist, discoverer of oxygen, inventor of soda pop, all kinds of interesting stuff. What does Priestley think? The English hierarchy, if there be anything unsound in its constitution, has equal reason to tremble, even at an air pump or an electrical machine. Electrical machines reveal the true order of nature, and they tell you that there's something wrong. So if the beginning of the 18th century, electricity is about the status quo, by the end of the 18th century, electricity is about the status quo, by the end of the 18th century, electricity is the revolutionary spirit. And Priestley is the guy who's delivering it. So come the French Revolution, certainly people in England,

people like Edmund Burke, are arguing that it's all the philosopher's fault. It's them that have set off the revolution. There's a brilliant cartoon, Priestley being bangled by a Frenchman in front of the mob. He's holding the prime conductor of an electrical machine in his hand, pointing it. He's electrifying the crowds. It's connected to a Leiden jar where all this electricity is coming from. Electricity is political. It's about revolution.

And going into the 19th century, it's about materialism. If you can produce life by means of electricity, if you can do things like Aldini, then that means that you don't need to talk about souls anymore. It's all material. So it's kind of grist to the mill, political radicals as a kind of an arm of the revolution that's going to be spreading across Europe, they hope. Amazing. Thank you so much. Goodness me, that's fascinating. Olga, any takeaways on that? Oh God, I didn't know that I had to have a takeaway,

but I am fascinated. I'm fascinated by this. This is very, very interesting. No takeaways required. We talk about electrifying a crowd, don't we? I mean, as a comedian, I'm sure you've had great nights where the crowd just feels electric. The room feels like it's buzzing, literally.

Yeah. I just want to put them all up my butt. That metaphor of electrifying an audience or a mob, it's kind of fascinating that even in the 18th century, there's already this sort of notion of electricity passing through people and energizing them and turning them into radicals and revolutionaries and people with guillotines so yeah really really interesting but it's interesting how when you describe how electricity

was politicized and how it feels far-fetched but in reality that happens with everything and the parallel that came to mind is art and how any sort of art was always politicized and when you said god was in the room the thing that came to mind was like frescoes were never credited right because the creativity came from god and just channeled through the person. Yeah. Sorry, that's not funny. It's not about butts, but that's what it made me think. Yeah, we were really looking for a butt related comment, but okay, I will accept that. Thank you. So what do you know now? So what do you know now? Well, it's time now for the So What Do You Know Now? This is our quickfire quiz for Olga

to see how much she has learned. You did very well last time. You got eight and a half out of 10 on a very tricky Yvonne the Terrible special. So are you feeling switched on for this one? Classic pun. Sorry, I've got loads of them. I've got just a big list of puns that I can dangle here. But we've got 10 questions. Do you feel like you've heard some shocking stuff? Absolutely. But I truly believe that the force is with me. Let's go. Okay. Spoken like a true Faraday fan. Okay, right. We've got 10 questions. Question one. Where does the word electricity come from?

It comes from the Greek word for amber. It does. Very good. Question two. What was twice accidentally invented in the 1740s to store electricity? Glass jars? Yeah, Leiden jars. Question three. How many Carthusian monks were simultaneously electrocuted by Jean-Antoine Nollet in 1746? It's a hard pass for me. I don't remember.

Two? 200. It was a hard pass for me. I don't remember. Two? 200. It was 200 months. 200 months. Question four. Before Faraday discovered electricity was a force, it was largely believed to be what? A fluid.

It was a vital fluid. Question five. Francis Hawksby was the chief experimenter for the Royal Society in 1705. With his spinny glass globe thingy, what colour did it glow? Purple. It was purply blue. Question six. Name one of the many electric products created to supposedly solve medical problems like exhaustion.

Belt. Yep. Mattress, towel, electric toothbrush, sandals. Absolutely. Well done. Very good. Question seven. Name two features of James Graham's celestial sex bed.

It was 12 feet long. It was, yeah. And it was surrounded by sexy ladies. It was. Question eight. Can you remember the name of the Italian physicist who invented the voltaic pile battery? Is it Volta? It is Volta, yeah. Question nine. Can you remember the name of the Italian physicist who invented the voltaic pile battery? Is it Volta?

It is Volta, yeah. Question nine. The idea of galvanism meant what? Oh, God. Think Frankenstein. Oh, reanimating bodies with electricity? And question ten. What was Alfred P. Southwick's invention in the late 1800s that is still, unfortunately, used today?

The electric chair. It was nine out of ten. Very good. Well done, Olga. Okay. And with jet lag as well, which is very impressive. Well, thank you so much, Olga and a listener. If you're keen for more Olga Koch, then you can go and listen to our excellent episode on Ivan the Terrible.

He was terrible, but Olga was very funny. So, you know, it's worth listening. If you want to know about the woman behind Frankenstein, check out our episode on Mary Shelley. We've got them all on BBC Sounds plus many, many more. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review, share it with your friends. Tell everyone, subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds, do all that stuff so you never miss an episode. I would like to say a huge thank you to our guests. In History Corner, we had the electrifying Professor Ewan Rees-Morris from the University of Aberystwyth. Thank you, Ewan. It's been my pleasure. It's been a hoot. And in Comedy Corner, the always sparky Olga Koch. Thank you, Olga.

Thank you so much. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we plug ourselves into another fascinating topic. See, endless puns. But for now, I'm off to go and see whether some electric underpants can cure my haemorrhoids. Bye! You're Dead to Me was a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4. The research was by Roxy Moore. The episode was written by Emma Neguse, Roxy Moore and me.

It was produced by Emma Neguse and me. The assistant producer was Emmy Rose Price-Goodfellow. The project manager was Isla Matthews and the audio producer was Steve Hankey. Please, I beg you in the name of God, I need some assistance from you. Who is worthy of our trust? I just thought this is very, very shady and there's something definitely wrong about this. He didn't believe me. I said, well, I'm not a schemer. I'm not a bad person.

Join me, Matthew Side, for the latest season of my BBC Radio 4 podcast, Sideways. for the latest season of my BBC Radio 4 podcast, Sideways. Seven new stories of seeing the world differently and the ideas that shape our lives. I need to figure out a way to really compensate him or else I'm going to be the scammer that I accused him of being. Sideways on BBC Sounds. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long.

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