CHAPTER XXXI.

“Massage” With Currents of High Frequency . 1

I trust that the present brief communication will not be inter-preted as an effort on my part to put myself on record as a“patent medicine” man, for a serious worker cannot despiseanything more than the misuse and abuse of electricity which wehave frequent occasion to witness. My remarks are elicited bythe lively interest which prominent medical practitioners evinceat every real advance in electrical investigation. The progressin recent years has been so great that every electrician and elec-trical engineer is confident that electricity will become the meansof accomplishing many things that have been heretofore, withour existing knowledge, deemed impossible. Ho wonder thenthat progressive physicians also should expect to find in it apowerful tool and help in new curative processes. Since I hadthe honor to bring before the American Institute of ElectricalEngineers some results in utilizing alternating currents of hightension, I have received many letters from noted physicians in-quiring as to the physical effects of such currents of high fre-quency. It may be remembered that I then demonstrated thata body perfectly well insulated in air can be heated by simplyconnecting it w r ith a source of rapidly alternating high potential.The heating in this ease is due in all probability to the bombard-ment of the body by air, or possibly by some other medium,which is molecular or atomic in construction, and the presenceof which has so far escaped our analysis—for according to myideas, the true ether radiation with such frequencies as even afew millions per second must be very small. This body may bea good conductor or it may be a very poor conductor of elec-tricity with little change in the result. The human body is, insuch a case, a fine conductor, and if a person insulated in a room,or no matter where, is brought into contact with such a source of

1. Article by Me. Tesla in The Electrical Engineer of Dec. 2Sd, 1891.