HEARING THROUGH WIRES: Antonio Meucci
Meucci had already developed fine rheostatic tuners for limiting the output power of his electrical device. He always applied the current to his own body in order to give completely “measured” electro-treatments. In this manner he was able to judge the parameters more personally and responsibly. It was his habit to administer treatments of this kind to his ailing wife, Esther. Crippling arthritis was becoming her personal prison, and Sr. Meucci wished to cure her completely of the malady. Watching and praying through until the dawn, Antonio struggled to perfect a means by which cures could be effected with selective impulse articulation.
As with each of Meucci’s developments, the fulfillment of his advanced medical ideas are found throughout the early twentieth century. Each researcher in this field of medical study employed very short impulses of controlled voltage to alleviate a wide variety of maladies. Independently rediscovering the Meucci electro-medical method throughout the early twentieth century were such persons as Nikola Tesla, Dr. A. Abrams, G. Lahkovsky, Dr. T. Colson. Each developed catalogues by which specific impulses were methodically directed to cure their associate illness. Each researcher developed a method for applying impulses of specifically controlled length and intensity to suffering patients, effecting historical cures.
More recently, several medical researchers have employed impulse generators to effect dramatic bone and tissue regenerations. They affirm that human physiology responds with rapidity when proper electroimpulses are applied to conditions of illness. These were closely regarded by government officials, eager to regulate the new science.
Most medical bureaucrats, fearing the elimination of their own pharmaceutical monopolies, sought opportunity to eradicate these revolutionary electromedical arts. Upton Sinclair obtained personal experience with these curative systems and the physicians who devised these methodologies. He championed their cause in numerous national publications with an aim toward exposing those who would suppress their work.
Sinclair pointed out the social revolution which would necessarily follow such discoveries. He was quick to mention that proliferations of new technologies would not come without a dramatic battle. Fought in the innermost boardrooms of intrigue, Sinclair underestimated the ability of regulators to eradicate technologies of social benefit.
This notable literary personage wrote extensively on the work of Dr. Abrams, who was later vilified by both the FDA and the AMA. An outlandish national purge quickly mounted into a fullscale assault on these methods. But this is a story best told in several other biographies. Meucci’s electromedical methods would soon be transformed into a revolutionary means for communicating with others at long distances.
SHOCK
The most central episode of Meucci’s life now unfolded. It was to be a serendipity of the most remarkable kind. Throughout his later years, Meucci recounted the following story which occurred in 1849, when he was forty-one years of age. A certain gentleman was suffering from an unbearable migraine headache. Since it was known to many that Meucci’s electromedical methods possessed definite curative ability, Sr. Meucci’s medical attention was sought.
Meucci placed the weak, suffering man on a chair in a nearby room. His weakened condition inspired an easy pity. Antonio had already felt the thorns of his beloved wife’s pain. Her eyes, like the man before him now, begged for the cure which lay hidden in mystery. Carefully, caringly, Antonio now sought to ease this man’s suffering.
In this severe instance, Meucci placed a small copper electrode in the patient’s mouth and asked him to hold the other (a copper rod) in his hand. The electro-impulse device was in an adjoining room. Meucci went into this room, placed an identical copper electrode in his own mouth, and held the other copper electrode to find the weakest possible impulse strength. Meucci told his patient to relax and to expect pain relief momentarily, making small incremental adjustments on the induction coil.
Migraines of severe intensity characteristically produce equally severe reaction to the slightest irritation. The man being now highly sensitive to pain, Meucci’s insignificant (though stimulating) current impulses were felt. The patient, anticipating some horrible shock, cried out in the other room with surprise at the very first slight tickle.
Momentarily, Meucci forgot the hurtful sympathy which he naturally felt in assisting this poor soul who sat across the hall. His focussed attention was suddenly diverted as an astounding empathy manifested itself: he had actually “felt” the sound of the man’s cry in his own mouth! After absorbing the surprise, he burst into the adjoining room to see why the man had so yelled. Glad the poor fellow had not run out on him, Meucci replaced the oral electrode of his suffering patient and went into the other room to perform the same adjustments…through closed doors this time. He asked the gentleman to talk louder, while he himself again held the electrode in his mouth.
Once more, to his own great shock, Meucci actually heard the distant voice “in his own mouth”. This vocalization was clear, distinct, and completely different from the muffled voice heard through the doors. This was a true discovery. Here, Antonio Meucci discovered what would later be known as the “electrophonic” effect.
The phenomenon, later known as physiophony, employs nerve responses to applied currents of very specific nature. As the neural mechanism in the body employs impulses of infinitesimal strengths, so Meucci had accidentally introduced similar “conformant” currents. These conformant currents contained auditory signals: sounds. The strange method of “hearing through the body” bypassed the ears completely and resounded throughout the delicate tissues of the contact point. In this case, it was the delicate tissues of the mouth.
Each expressed their thanks to the other, and the relieved patient went home. The impulse cure had managed to “break up” the migraine condition. Meucci’s reward was not monetary. It was found in a miraculous accident; the transmission of the human voice along a charged wire. In these several little experiments, Meucci had determined and defined the future history of all telephonic arts.
VOICES
Excited and elated Antonio asked certain friends to indulge his patience with similar experiments. He gave individual oral electrodes to each and asked that his friends each speak or yell. Meucci, seated behind a sealed door, touched his electrode to the corner of his mouth. As each person spoke or yelled, Meucci clearly heard speech again. Internal sound reception in the very tissues of the mouth. An astounding discovery.