Book review: Electrified Sheep

Authored by Alex Boese in 2011 (ISBN 978-1-250-00753-7).

Scientific experiments range from the mundane to the bizarre.  This volume spends all of its time on the bizarre end of the spectrum.

The title refers to one of the earlier experiments in electricity where scientists were determining the voltage and amperage necessary to kill a sheep.  Sounds cruel, and it was, but in most of these experiments runs at least a trace, perhaps even a swath, of legitimacy:  how dangerous is electricity to humans.  After running electricity through mice, birds, rabbits, turkeys, foxes and sheep and measuring survival scientists are able to gauge the threshold for humans.  By trying to revive electrocuted animals we can learn what techniques might revive people, too.  Houses with newly-invented lightning rods, with animals inside, were struck.

In fairness, many of these scientists intentionally ran electricity through themselves for a number of reasons:  curiosity, bravado or a lack of animals (there are presently no mice, birds, rabbits, turkeys, foxes or sheep in my house, for example).

Plants, too, received jolts.  They were generally more resistant than animals, at least to the point immediately prior to igniting.  Some experimenters thought they observed increased growth from electrified plants and these observations led to experiments with animals and, eventually children.  Yes, children, and the first experimental result were promising until it was discovered that "overzealous" nurses were placing the largest babies in the cribs carrying current.

The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrifying for Japan.  They also upset military planners here:  what is someone dropped on of those things on us, or on our battleships?  No one knew, and while physical damage would be easy enough to measure the Navy also wanted to know how its crew would fare.  Pretty well it turned out, at least initially.  Animals at ground zero of course died, but those further out seemed to be fine.  Read more about the bomb here, and about the bathing suit it inspired.) Little was known at that time regarding the long-term nature of radiation poisoning.  The U.S. military was elated, until ...

... Sputnik.  The Russians were now ahead, having beaten us into space, and we needed to counter the negative public relations emanating from that defeat.  We were still ahead in nuclear weaponry, but publicly-announced A-bomb explosions were becoming passé.  However, no one had ever exploded a weapon on the moon!  Now, that would be something.  A young Carl Sagan and other scientists were charged with the planning.  As large as a hydrogen bomb explosion is, the moon is very, very far away.  The portion of the moon that we see is quite bright when compared with the nighttime sky and an explosion would barely be visible.  Exploding a device on the edge of the visible moon would help, but eventually the project was scrapped.  The Russians had considered the effort, too, but wondered about a failed launched that sent a bomb "spiraling" back to earth instead of the moon.  They considered it too politically risky; no word on whether U.S. military officials considered that possibility too risky, or if they considered that possibility at all.

As a consolation prize, if you will, the U.S. military was permitted to explode a nuclear device in the Van Allen belts (which are responsible for Earth's magnetic field and which also shield us from certain harmful solar radiation).  They started planning the day after James Van Allen discovered them and gave his approval which, according to historian James Fleming, represented "a unique instance in which a scientist discovered something and immediately decided to blow it up".  The military did not attempt to keep the effort secret (they wanted the publicity and, in any event, it would be too conspicuous to hide).  Scientists and pacifists around the world howled protests but the military assured that belts would be back to normal within a few days or weeks.  It was a spectacular show:  1/3 of the currently orbiting satellites were crippled, the magnetic field around Hawaii was shifted by 1/3 of a degree for 30 minutes, power lines fused, and the Van Allen belts did not return to normal for over one year.  Because we liked satellites we agreed with the Russians to no longer test nuclear devices above ground.

Speaking of radiation risk, I live in Denver which, based on this analysis (enhanced radiation exposure from the high-altitude sun above the sky and uranium below the ground, perhaps should be evacuated).

Author Boese treads over sociology experiments I have described to a small degree in another post but provides additional details.  Picture the scene:  you arrive promptly at the appointed time for an experiment in visual perception.  Seated next to you are other participants and a guy or gal in a white lab coat.  The lab-coat person explains the experiment:  everyone will be shown two boards, one with three lines, one with one line.  The subjects' task is to identify on the three-line board which line equals the length of the line on the single-line board.  You happen to be last in the circle.  Go.  The first subject looks at the boards and says "B".  Each subject answers the same way until it is your turn and, indeed, line B is the same length (answers "A" and "C" are not even close).  The lab-coat presents the next pair of boards and again everyone provides the same answer.  And again.  On the fourth round the first subject chooses the wrong answer.  You can plainly see that but it is not your turn to speak.  The second subject repeats the answer.  What's happening, you ask yourself?  Everyone in turn answers incorrectly (unknown to you, they are in cahoots with the lab-coat), and now it is your turn.  How do you answer?

If you are like 75% of the subjects in Solomon Asch's study you answer incorrectly, intentionally, in conformance with the group.  We like to please.  In another experiment locals were willing to give to tourists directions to non-existent hotels:  oh, yes, I know where the Hotel Monaco is, that will be three blocks down this street and turn left.  This, even though there is no Hotel Monaco, and these locals were being genuine because, when later asked for directions to a real hotel they gave helpful and correct answers.  In another experiment more than 90% of respondents had an opinion on the merits of the "Federal Metallic Metals Act" (good idea, bad idea, should be left to the individual states, etc.) even though there was no such act.

I started this review with electricity experiments and noted that, in addition to electrifying other living things scientist would also jolt themselves.  I conclude with additional "do-it-yourselfers", as Boese labels them, in three fields:  operation, painful sensation, and digestion.

Today doctors rarely operate on themselves.  However there are reported cases, even in the days before anesthesia, usually men removing gall bladder stones through "holes" created by previous surgeries performed third-person.  After anesthesia the possibilities abounded.  Cocaine was one of the first local anesthetics. Sigmund Freud used it frequently, but not locally (the word today might be addict).  Experimenters would inject cocaine into their colleagues spinal column and then plunge a needle into the leg, up to the bone, to verify its pain-killing effect.  Surgeons undergoing scheduled surgery might become impatient or bored and announce to the assembled:  I will be performing this surgery myself; nurse, hand put some pillows behind my head and hand me a scalpel.  Many an appendix was removed in this manner.  The surgeon might sew up at the end or have another doctor do so, depending on that surgeon's standard practice when operating on someone else.

Painful sensation research covered the gamut:  having a research partner sever nerves in your arm; squeeze your testicles; inject saline at various points throughout the body; bring a vehicle traveling near the speed of sound to a standstill in one second; allow a tarantula (not a big deal) or black widow spider (nearly causing death) bite you; hang you.

Self-digestion research included "all manner" of objects:  edible or not, perhaps toxic.  In the the late 1700s little was known about digestive mechanisms.  How were nutrients absorbed?  Was the food crushed?  Decomposed?  To test crushing experimenters would place food into perforated wooden capsules before swallowing.  When the capsules emerged from the "the other end" the food was gone, meaning the food was not crushed.  Next, food was eaten and then vomited; the vomit was placed to the side, next to the same food dropped in a glass of water.  After three days the food in the vomit was gone whereas the food in the water was not, though it was rotted.  So, stomach juices were therefore responsible for digestion, not decomposition.  Wooden-capsule-enclosed food was sometimes extracted from feces and sent for another trip, to measure digestion time for various edibles.  And, not just food:  metal or glass balls, for example.  Tapeworms (which yielded valuable insights for treatment).  And, vomit, from the victims of yellow fever.  This last experiment, which did not harm the swallower, was a step along the path to identifying the transmission vector:  mosquito bites.