CHAPTER

Gustave Flaubert, Charles Dickens, and Isaac Pulvermacher’s “Magic Band”

11 Robert K. Waits1

Sunnyvale, CA, USA Corresponding author: Tel.: þ1-408-738-3776, e-mail address: [email protected]

1

Abstract Around 1850, Isaac L. Pulvermacher (1815–1884) joined the ranks of so-called “galvanists” who had, for nearly a century, been touting the shocks and sparks of electricity as a miracle cure for all ills, including neurological complaints such as palsy and hemiplegia. The famed authors, Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), in France, and Charles Dickens (1812–1870), in England, although contemporaries, apparently never met or corresponded. But during their lives, they both became aware of Pulvermacher and his patented Hydro-Electric Chains, claimed to impart vigor and cure nearly every complaint. Pulvermacher’s chains made a cameo appearance in Madame Bovary (1857), Flaubert’s controversial (and most successful) novel. Among Dickens’s last letters (1870) was an order for I. L. Pulvermacher and Company’s “magic band.” Since the Victorian age, electrical and magnetic cures, for better or worse, continue to be products of both the medical profession and quackery.

Keywords Dickens (Charles), Flaubert (Gustave), Bancroft (Marie), Madame Bovary (novel), Pulvermacher (Isaac Louis), hydro-electric chains, quackery, medical electricians

1 THE MEDICAL ELECTRICIANS The shocks and sparks or “electrification” by static electricity generated by friction from hand-powered “electric machines” were sources of entertainment in the 18th century, and also intrigued natural philosophers, physicians, and the new breed of “medical electricians.” What was the nature of this mysterious “ethereal fire” and could it be of medical use? Progress in Brain Research, Volume 205, ISSN 0079-6123, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-63273-9.00018-6 © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) had been experimenting with electricity since 1747 and soon acquired an electric machine and reported his investigations of the effect of static shock on victims of palsy and paralysis (Finger, 2006, p. 93 ff.). Franklin, having coined the term “electrician,” could thus be honored as the first “medical electrician,” although actually not the first individual to attempt such treatments, and “Franklinism” would become a term of art for medical treatment by frictional electricity, which no doubt would have dismayed Dr. Franklin. Although by 1757 Franklin concluded: “I never knew any Advantage from Electricity in Palsies that was permanent,” Franklin would later have experiences to suggest that electricity might be useful in treating mental disorders such as hysteria, melancholia (depression), and madness (severe mental illnesses) (Finger, 2006, pp. 98, 102–114). Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) an English theologian and natural philosopher, who later became famous for isolating oxygen, the component of air that supported combustion, included chapters on Medical Electricity in his popular book “The History and Present State of Electricity” (Priestley, 1769, pp. 383–396; Priestley, 1775, pp. 472–489). Priestley quoted accounts of neurological cases treated by static electricity that had been read before the Royal Society and published in Philosophical Transactions. Two such cases are worth mentioning here; the first describes a treatment gone awry. In May 1748, Robert Roche a “Stranger” to the Society (that is, a non-member) wrote that a 16-year-old son, who for 6 or 7 years had been “troubled with sudden Fits that intirely take away his Senses.” Roche’s son had been pronounced incurable, so Roche, who must have been fairly well off financially, reported that he had built his own “large Machine for Electrifying” and had been “shocking” his son twice a day for “some benefit.” One day, during the usual electrification, the boy, clothed in a “coarse fustian [cotton and flax] working Frock,” stood on an isolating (nonconducting) pedestal. To Roche’s great surprise, upon touching the shoulder of his electrified son “to procure snaps [sparks] as usual,” . . . the furzy flax of the Frock caught Fire with a great Blaze, and burnt the whole Breadth and Length of the Shoulder . . . the Flame rising 6 Inches above the Collar, and I believe would have set the Frock on Fire, had I not put it out with my Hands. Roche, 1748, p. 323

A second case, in 1757, submitted by Patrick Brydone (1736–1819), reported “a complete cure of a hemiplegia, and, indeed, an almost universal paralytic affection, in about three days” (Priestley, 1769, p. 475). His patient was viewed as having hysteria, and his result was attested to by the patient herself, and witnessed by Patrick’s father. The patient, Miss Elizabeth Foster, age 33, had been afflicted for over two years, and had: . . . lost all motion and sensation in her left side . . . her head shook violently; her tongue faltered so much that could not articulate a word . . . she could not distinguish colors [with her left eye] . . . was often seized with such an universal coldness and insensibility, that those who saw her . . . scarce knew whether she was dead or alive. Brydone, 1757, p. 392

1 The Medical Electricians

The treatment began with: [S]everal very severe shocks . . . and after undergoing the operation for a few minutes longer, cried out with great joy that she felt her foot on the ground . . . the [shocks] were continued; and that day the woman . . . receive[d] above 200 shocks . . . . Next day, being electrified as before . . . and when that was over she walked with a stick . . . The experiment was repeated on the third day; by which time she had received in a upwards of 600 severe shocks. Brydone, 1757, p. 393

A neighboring minister wrote . . . he had never observed the electrical shock so strong from any [electric] machine, and . . . [Patrick Brydone] has not only applied himself to the study of natural philosophy, but also of medicine. Brydone, 1757, p. 395

The British cleric John Wesley (1703–1791), a founder of Methodism and contemporary of Franklin, was convinced that static electricity could be useful in treating illness and collected case histories in his 1760 book: The Desideratum: or, Electricity made Plain and Useful. Wesley was an empiricist and after reading Priestley’s book remarked in a sermon: We know it [electricity] is a thousand medicines in one, in particular that it is the most efficacious medicine in nervous disorders of any kind, which has yet been discovered. But if we aim at a theory, we know nothing . . . . Bertucci, 2006, p. 359

Friction electric machines were expensive, most were not very portable, and an assistant was needed to crank them.1 Friction machines were succeeded by new innovations based on the discoveries of Alessandro Volta (1745–1827) in 1800 and Michael Faraday (1791–1867) in 1831, but all had disadvantages. Voltaic piles and acid-filled wet cell batteries were messy and cumbersome. The Faraday-inspired electro-magnetic (or magneto-electric) induction coils, although more portable, were still expensive and dangerous in the wrong hands. All of these devices were touted as near-universal cures by “galvanists,” the charlatan breed of medical electricians, who promiscuously quoted all the reports, rumors, and hearsay of electrical cures and near-cures but omitted any news of the failures of electrification to effect a cure or even to worsen the condition. The ultimate neurological cure was reported by William Hooper Halse (ca. 1802– 1899), among the less ethical medical electricians. Halse, a English medical galvanist for nearly 60 years, had a storied past. In 1840 he dramatically described how he restored a freshly-drowned spaniel puppy to life with “many hundreds” of electric shocks (two other puppies drowned at the same time, not subjected to his electrical 1

In his book on Medical Electricity, one quack, Thomas Gale, described how to build an electric machine out of common materials for “about two dollars cost” (Gale, 1802, pp. 243–253).

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treatment, did not survive). Halse did not claim to have brought the dead to life but rather that, “I arrested the process of dying, by restoring the sensorial functions– which . . . had entirely ceased . . . .” (Halse, 1840, p. 481). According to historian Iwan Morus, Halse had arrived in London from Devonshire during the early 1840s and distributed “pamphlets . . . packed with grateful testimonials and stories of miraculous cures from his days in Devon . . .” (Morus, 1998, pp. 144–145). Halses’s pamphlets grew from 12 pages in 1843 to 38 pages in 1846 and 51 pages in 1883, the latter with the lengthy title: “On the Extraordinary Remedial Efficacy of Medical Galvanism when Applied by Means of Halse’s Galvanic Apparatus.” Halse died in London in March 1899 at age 87.2 Halse was a contemporary of Isaac Louis Pulvermacher (1815–1884) who in 1850 conceived of a portable battery consisting of many voltaic cells of zinc and gilded copper wire, strung together in a chain and moistened by vinegar, which could produce a shock and spark nearly as strong as a friction or electromagnetic machine. So why not associate, without comment or qualification, the miracle cures promised by previous electrical experimenters using static, voltaic or electromagnetic electricity to Pulvermacher’s invention? Pulvermacher and his agents (Charles Meinig in London, and J. Steinert in New York) and later the worldwide I. L. Pulvermacher Co., began advertising widely in England, France and America.

2 THE GREAT EXHIBITION In the spring of 1851 what has been called the first World’s Fair, and officially billed as “The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations,” opened at London’s newly-built Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. The onset of the electric era was heralded by exhibits of telegraphic instruments, batteries, and electro-magnetic apparatus. It was at the Great Exhibition that Charles Ludovic Augustus Meinig of 103 Leadenhall Street in London, introduced Isaac Louis Pulvermacher’s “portable galvanic battery of 120 elements,” the first iteration of what would become Pulvermacher’s famous Hydroelectric Chains, later advertised as “Rewarded by the Great Exhibition of All Nations, 1851.” Meinig appears to have exhibited the only truly quackish electro-medical appliance at the Crystal Palace; he misidentified the inventor as Mr. T. L. Pulvermacher (Fig. 1). Meinig’s stall was flanked by booths showing electric telegraph apparatus and “glass and porcelain vessels for chemical purposes.” An 1859 advertisement made the claim: “Ten years ago Mr. Pulvermacher succeeded in making a popular remedy of that miraculous power, Galvanic Electricity, which . . . possesses curative properties of the most invigorating description.” Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), and Charles Dickens (1812–1870), both visited the Great Exhibition. Flaubert visited soon after he had finished a rough scenario of what would be his first and most successful novel: Madame Bovary. 2

London Gazette, Mar. 28. 1899, p. 2118.

2 The Great Exhibition

FIGURE 1 Pulvermacher 1851 Exhibit Catalog Listing. Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, 1851, p. 460.

[Flaubert’s] . . . mother conceived the whim of paying a visit to the Great Exhibition in London – with him, of course, and with little Caroline3 – and Flaubert hoped . . . he could postpone his work on the unattractive but compelling novel for an indefinite time. . . . In England he walked all over the Exhibition with his mother, carrying on his shoulders his ecstatic niece– . . . [and] thought about his novel as little as possible. . . . The Great Exhibition was splendid–‘splendid, even though popular,’ as Flaubert put it– but three or four weeks was quite long enough for Madame Flaubert to be away from Croisset. Steegmuller, 1939/1966, pp. 233–234

Charles Dickens also visited the Great Exhibition, but did not find it compelling. Even the prospect was daunting and . . . made him want to get out of town to avoid the many thousands of visitors, and he failed to be cheered by the signs of progress it brought . . . He forced himself to visit the Exhibition, found it a muddle. Tomalin, 2011, p. 233

Dickens wrote his secretary, William H. Wills, in July, 1851: “I always had a instinctive feeling against the Exhibition, of a faint inexplicable sort” (Storey et al., 1988, p. 448). Dickens found the Exhibition difficult to navigate and after the first of several visits, wrote (anonymously) on July 5 in his weekly literary magazine Household Words: Where to begin, and how to advance with any prospect of concluding in a reasonable number of daily visits–is the difficulty. It is not much diminished by the great official Catalogue (to say nothing of the “Synopsis,” the “Popular Guide,” &c.,) to which no index is attached, nor any compass-box–which is almost equally

3

“Little Caroline” was Flaubert’s 5-year-old niece, the daughter of his sister, also named Caroline, who had died soon after the child was born.

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needed by the persevering navigator of all the “bays” below and above. . . . [I]t is impossible in any allowable space to “go through” the whole Exhibition, or touch upon a tithe of its Catalogue. Dickens, 1851, p. 356

Dickens (1851, p. 356) satirically contrasted the advances displayed by England in the “Great Exhibition” with “the Little” Exhibition from China “a people who came to a dead stop, Heaven knows how many hundreds of years ago . . . .” Dickens (1851, p. 357) considered the medical advances, “such as the artificial leech . . . the guard razor, which shaves off hair and will not cut flesh; artificial arms, hands, feet, legs, eyes,” and lauded electrical inventions, such as the electric clock, and “above all, the electric telegraphs.” He might have overlooked Meinig’s stall, but in any event, he failed to contrast Pulvermacher’s electro-medical advances with those of China.

3 ISAAC L. PULVERMACHER Isaac Louis (or Lewis) Pulvermacher was one of the more successful professional electricians turned quack. Pulvermacher, the name translates as “powder maker,” was born in Kempen, Prussia, started out as a jeweler’s apprentice and jeweler in Vienna and Prague, and after studying electricity in Prague, became an electrical engineer in Vienna (Boase, 1897, p. 1670). In 1849 Pulvermach proposed a significant improvement on dynamos still in use today,4 however Pulvermacher was to find electrical quackery more lucrative than professional engineering and was a pioneer in the field. Pulvermacher was a wanderer: according to his US patents, he resided in Berlin in 1846, Paris (1850), Breslau, Prussia (1852–1853), moved back to Paris, and finally settled in London, where he became a British citizen in 1868. He died in London and is buried in West Hampstead cemetery.5 In 1853, Pulvermacher was issued a US patent for a “Voltaic Battery and Apparatus for Medical and Other Purposes.” 6 Nearly 19 years later, Pulvermacher was granted a lengthy US patent for an “Improvement in Electro-Galvanic Chains, Bands, &c.” This 15-page patent, illustrated with no less than 82 drawings, describes the “. . . Construction of Electric, Galvanic, and Magnetic Chains, Bands, Pads, and Garments” for “treating diseases and complaints.” Multiple US patents were issued to Pulvermacher in 1876, all with ownership assigned to John E. Hetherington, who subsequently ran the Pulvermacher business in America in Cincinnati, Ohio. Pulvermacher continued in his profession as an electrical engineer, receiving at least nine British patents between 1876 and 1878 for non-medical electrical devices, including a current regulator, galvanometers, arc and incandescent lamps, and an electric generator (British Patents: 1876–1900). 4

Pulvermacher, I. L., British Patent No. 12899, 15 Dec. 1849 (Howell and Schroeder, 1927, p. 20; Thompson, 1903, p. 8). Pulvermacher also had an early electro-magnetic induction coil patent: Pulvermacher, I. L., British Patent No. 2411, 17 Sept. 1857. 5 Some Pulvermacher marriage and family details can be found at archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/ read/BRITISH-JEWRY/2009-11/1258208613. 6 Pulvermacher, I. L., US patent No. 9571, 1 Feb. 1853.

4 The Chains

4 THE CHAINS Pulvermacher’s medical devices, variations on chains, belts, and portable batteries, used voltaic cells operating on the same principle as a grade-school science fair battery—a copper penny and a zinc-galvanized nail stuck in a lemon. Pulvermacher’s innovation was to use wooden dowels to absorb the activating acidic vinegar; the dowels wrapped with zinc and gilded copper wires (Fig. 2). Although the weak electric current generated by a single-element voltaic device was barely detectable by a sensitive galvanometer, Pulvermacher’s chains had from 24 to over 100 such elements, which, if connected in series, could provide a significant voltage, and if connected in parallel, a surge of current. Pulvermacher’s agent recruited a unwilling champion for the portable galvanic chain battery in the person of Dr. Golding Bird (1814–1854), a well-regarded physician with an M.D. from St. Andrews in Scotland. In 1836, Dr. Bird had begun a pioneering study at Guy’s Hospital in London, “aimed at providing electrotherapeutics with a rational base” (Morus, 1998, pp. 234–236). During the winter of 1850 Pulvermacher demonstrated a one-hundred link portable battery to Dr. Bird, who was impressed with its possibilities as a convenient source of electricity. In an October 1851 article in The Lancet medical journal, Bird described the apparatus, applauded its possible medical uses, but also warned of its misuse: The ingenious modification of Volta’s pile, contrived by Dr. Pulvermacher, of Vienna, has attracted so much attention, that the following account of the value of the apparatus as a source of electricity, may not perhaps be uninteresting . . . we [medical electro-therapists] have often felt the need of an apparatus by which an

FIGURE 2 Pulvermacher chain (Lardner, 1856, p. 288).

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uniform and uninterrupted current of voltaic electricity could be at our command at short notice . . . the hydro-electric chain completely fills these desiderata. The apparatus I have used, was placed in my hands . . . by Dr. Pulvermacher himself. He is a scientific man, and well acquainted with physical science generally, nor is he, I presume, responsible for the manner in which his invention has been extolled, as sort of universal panacea, by the London agent in the public advertisements. Bird, 1851, p. 388

As Dr. Bird described it, the chain could produce a steady current, but also, by means of an interrupter (a vibrating helical spring enclosed in a glass tube that opens and closes the connection), the device could produce “a rapid succession of rather violent shocks. . . .” Bird concluded, “The advantages . . . to the medical man consist in giving him a means of obtaining a current of electricity of amply sufficient tension [voltage] and quantity [current] for all physiological purposes, at a moment’s notice.” In other words, it was a simple and convenient portable battery (Fig. 3). The last sentence of Bird’s article was prophetic: “It is indeed, deeply to be regretted that so convenient a source of electricity runs the risk of losing favor in the sight of educated men generally, and our profession in particular, by advertisements claiming for a medical influence it in no wise possesses” (Bird, 1851, p. 389). Shortly after Pulvermacher’s visit, and in response to a personal request by a representative of Charles Meinig, Pulvermacher’s London agent, Dr. Bird wrote a letter of introduction to “eminent physicians at Edinburgh,” innocently thinking he was

FIGURE 3 Pulvermacher chain belt and case. The belt is slightly over five feet long when extended. Courtesy of John Jenkins, sparkmuseum.com

4 The Chains

advising colleagues of a useful electrical source. Meinig’s advertisements of Pulvermacher’s “powerful and universal therapeutic agent” then began appearing in newspapers, as well as in The Medical Times and The Lancet (Fig. 4), all of which quoted Dr. Bird’s letter as “published with his kind permission.” Dr. Bird denied giving such permission, as he explained in correspondence reprinted in the

FIGURE 4 Advertisement in The Lancet, August 27, 1853.

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Association Medical Journal: “two or three lines” of the letter were printed “without my authority” (Bird, 1853, p. 317). Indeed, I wrote to Mr. Meinig to threaten legal proceedings. . . I need hardly say how much vexation had been occasioned me by seeing my name employed to support the pretensions of what is now a quack remedy – for surely this term is not too strong for an apparatus that is declared to cure a large proportion of . . . diseases . . . many of them instantaneously. . . . I have never before paid so heavy a penalty for giving a certificate to any one man. In one week, shortly after the first appearance of the advertisement, I had nearly one hundred letters of inquiry. Even now, a week never elapses with my receiving one or two. . . . I . . . deeply regret that a certificate given in good faith to recommend a scientific instrument to the notice of our profession, should have been employed to advocated it as a quack remedy. – April 4th, 1853. Bird, 1853, p. 317

Bird had previously written to Meinig in November 1851. In reply, Meinig contended that Dr. Bird had indeed authorized publication of the testimonial “whenever and in what manner I might find useful,” and refused to discontinue the advertisements. With chutzpah only a quack could summon, Meinig generously suggested to “. . . send to your house for the letters [of inquiry] as often as you like, and [I will] answer them; or shall have answers printed according to your directions . . . .” Meinig grandly offered to pay any postage incurred. The Journal editor commented: Medical practitioners would do well . . . to refuse all written testimonials . . . many, we fear sign certificates for the use of advertising . . . simply . . . [to] have their names constantly placed before the public eye. Quackery is eagle-eyed, and ever on the alert cunningly to convert the names and the written opinions of professional men into trading capital, to be used in pillaging the public by various devices. Bird, 1853, p. 318

Surprisingly, Dr. Bird had repudiated such testimonials 5 years earlier in an 1846 article in The Lancet: . . . electro-magnetism . . . under the name of galvanism, is more frequently the weapon of the irregular practitioner of electricity than any other. . . my name has been advertised in connexion with the apparatus used to administer it, and . . . liberties have been taken, implying a sanction of proceedings . . . . Bird, 1846, p. 649

5 NEUROLOGICAL CURES Pulvermacher’s advertisements did not include the usual letters from satisfied customers, which most quacks relied on. Instead they listed physicians, hospitals and medical associations that supposedly endorsed his portable batteries—the “Dr. Bird

5 Neurological Cures

method” writ large. A Pulvermacher advertising pamphlet published in 1853 for “professional gentlemen” by Pulvermacher’s New York agent, one J. Steinert, explained in some detail how to connect and use the chains for treating various portions of the body. The brochure also described the physical effects of various chain configurations: “With 15 links the electric current passes through the human body, produces sparks before the eyes and all other physiological phenomena. . . . the number of links or chains may be increased beyond 120 to such a point that the shock become unsupportable” (Steinert, 1853, p. 4). Indeed, a special committee of the New York Academy of Medicine reported that shocks from four chains of 60 units connected together “too painful to endure” (Steinert, 1853, p. 12). Steinert listed several endorsements and neurological case studies, for example— Endorsements: An M.D., a professor of surgery in the New York Medical College, “In amaurosis, neuralgia, and other nervous maladies I deem it [Pulvermacher’s Hydro-Electric Chain] highly expedient.” An M.D., a physician to Bellevue Hospital in New York: “I have known the . . . Chains of Pulvermacher used in cases of paralysis, with every great benefit to the patient . . . .” The case studies included: Miss ___, constant nervous pain in here head and clavus . . . instantly relieved by the application of the Chain along the forehead and from the occiput to the spine. Mrs. ___, put [a chain] round her forehead, it removed the pain [of her nervous headache], and does so every time. It is gradually wearing away.

There was a cautionary tale from S. T. Evans, M.D., Physician to the Newmarket-onFergus Dispensary [England] of, Mr. ____, his mind becomes tired and incapable of continued thought. . . . a Chain applied round his head and forehead . . . and has been capable of more continued application in either thinking or writing since. . . . but it application in such cases should not be continued too long, for serious injury may result to the cerebral organism from constant and forced stimulation. It deserves to be closely studied in relation to its action on the brains of intellectual individuals.

From London, there were general recommendations from a J. B. Thompson, M.D., to Mr. C. Meinig, “In cases simulating epilepsy, that have been subjected to continuous current, appear to derive considerable benefit therefrom, and I trust may, after prolonged application, prove more successful than the means hitherto had recourse to.” A report from a Paris M.D., cited several case studies for unspecified pains and diseases in sides, limbs, heads, and rheumatic neuralgia of the muscles of the head, periodically accompanied with spasms, painful and depressing giddiness . . . ,” which were “ameliorated” by “fixing the two pole plates” of the chains, behind, and a little lower than the ears, the chain hanging down front. Also in Paris: “treatment of nervous diseases of the eyes, such as amaurosis, convulsive agitation of the eye-balls, etc. . . . If a chain is put to the temples, the well known apparition of light is observed. Steinert, 1853, pp. 13–24

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6 GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Pulvermacher’s hydro-electric chains made a cameo appearance in Flaubert’s bestselling novel, Madame Bovary. Flaubert (Fig. 5) finished the manuscript of Madame Bovary in April, 1856 (Steegmuller, 1939/1966, p. 308); it was announced in the August 1 issue of Revue de Paris as by August Faubert (the letter “l” missing), the name of a Paris grocer (this greatly distressed Flaubert: “This damned ‘Faubert’ makes me much more disgusted than indignant.”) The first installment was finally published on October 1, and the last of six installments was published on December 15 (Steegmuller, 1939/1966, p. 315 ff.). Many readers, shocked by the immorality of Emma Bovary depicted in the first installments of the book (she was an adulteress!), wrote letters of complaint. As a result the final chapters were censored by the editor: “. . . shorn of a dozen passages” including “the description of the wanderings of the curtained cab,” which was transporting Madame Bovary and her lover (Steegmuller, 1939/1966, p. 325). Flaubert prefaced the last installment with a note ending: . . . I hereby decline responsibility for the lines that follow. The reader is therefore asked to consider them as a series of fragments, not as a whole. Steegmuller, 1939/1966, p. 316

FIGURE 5 Gustave Flaubert, ca. 1856—Euge`ne Giraud. Public domain. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flaubert-Giraud.jpg.

6 Gustave Flaubert

Legal problems ensued. Ultimately, despite the censorship, Flaubert and his publisher were accused of corrupting French morality (a misdemeanor) and brought to trial. The case was dismissed, but Madame Bovary was now famous. Flaubert sold the rights to a publisher for 5 years for 500 francs and the manuscript was published in book form in April 1857. Fifteen thousand copies were sold in 2 months (Steegmuller, 1939/1966, p. 330). Flaubert created a secondary, but very important character for his novel, the provincial pharmacist, Homais, who “lived across the square from Madame Bovary . . . and painted him as ‘at one time comic and disgusting, essentially and personally fetid’” (Steegmuller, 1939/1966, p. 299). Aside from the purported immorality of Madame Bovary, Flaubert was castigated for his portrayal of pharmacists. Flaubert wrote an admirer in 1870: “All the pharmacists in the Seine-Infe´rieure recognizing themselves in Homais, wanted to descend upon my house and give me a good thrashing . . .” (trans. in Wall, 1997, p. 342). On the closing pages of the novel, after Madame Bovary’s suicide, accomplished with arsenic carelessly left unsecured in the shop of Monsieur Homais (Flaubert did not favor Homais with a given name), the pharmacist continues to carry on his business, proud of introducing fashionable but ineffective medicines to the locals, and enthusiastically endorses Pulvermacher’s chains. After Emma Bovary’s death, Homais . . . did not abandon pharmacy at all; on the contrary! He kept up with the latest discoveries. He followed the great chocolate movement. He was the first to bring cho-ca and revalentia7 to the Seine-Infe´rieure. He waxed enthusiastic over Pulvermacher hydroelectric belts; he wore one himself; and at night, when he took off his flannel vest, Madame Homais was quite dazzled by the sight of the golden spiral8 in which he was almost lost to view, and she felt a redoubling of her passion for this man, bound tighter than a Scythian9 and as splendid as a Magian priest.10 Flaubert/Davis, 1857/2010, p. 306

Flaubert was perhaps portraying Homais’s credulity: his belief in the “miraculous power” of the Pulvermacher cure in cases of male “nervous debility.” After Emma

7 Revalenta Arabica was sold as an extraordinary restorative. It was a preparation of the common lentil, its first name being formed for disguise by the transposition of its earlier botanical name, Ervum lens. (Adapted from Wikipedia entry for Revalenta Arabica.) 8 Recall that the copper wires of Pulvermacher’s chains were gilded. 9 Depictions of Scythians in their parade armor resemble a patient swathed in Pulvermacher’s chain belts. In fact, as the chains were batteries, they were not meant to be worn on the body in this manner. 10 Flaubert wrote: “Il n’abandonnait point la pharmacie; au contraire! Il se tenait au courant des de´couvertes. Il suivait le grand mouvement des chocolats. C’est le premier qui ait fait venir dans la SeineInfe´rieure du cho-ca et de la revalentia. Il s’e´prit d’enthousiasme pour les chaıˆnes hydro-e´lectriques Pulvermacher; il en portait une lui-meˆme; et, le soir, quand il retirait son gilet de flanelle, madame Homais restait tout e´blouie devant la spirale d’or sous laquelle il disparaissait, et sentait redoubler ses ardeurs pour cet homme plus garrotte´ qu’un Scythe et splendide comme un mage.”

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Bovary’s husband, the only doctor in the village, died, Homais uses devious methods to get rid of subsequent doctors and is left in sole control of the medical profession in Yonville. On the last line of the book, Homais, as the result of blatant self-promotion, achieves his life’s goal: he is awarded the French “Legion of Honor.” The medal was awarded to Flaubert himself in 1866 at age 45 (Steegmuller, 1939/1966, p. 350). How did Flaubert come to know of Pulvermacher? The novelist may have come across Pulvermacher’s Hydro-Electric Chain advertisements in popular French magazines. Charles Meinig advertised a Paris “Head Depot” at 43 Rue Richer at which “the Chains may be freely tested.” In April 1851, the Academie Nationale de Medicine published a report lauding the “Voltaic Chains of Mr. Pulvermacher” (Steinert, 1853, p 20). Also, as the son and brother of surgeons, he was familiar with medical treatments, and “. . . read books on popular beliefs, books of popular medicine” (Steegmuller, 1939/1966, p. 299). Flaubert was afflicted with unexplained attacks, suffering psychedelic-like hallucinations and lapsing into unconsciousness. His father and brother (both trained physicians) as well as others administered customary treatments for epilepsy, which Flaubert described in letters written during February 1844, treatments including purges and bleeding by leeches and phlebotomy (Jallon and Jallon, 2005, p. 52; Wall, 1997, p. 16). Flaubert did not mention having electrical treatments and Pulvermacher’s chains were not available until about 1850. Based his symptoms, it is most likely that Flaubert’s seizures were due to problems within his brain: either an “arterial or arteriovenous malformation . . . [or] “occipital-temporal atrophy” of unknown origin (Jallon and Jallon, 2005, p. 52).

7 CHARLES DICKENS In mid-December 1858, in a letter to his close friend and advisor, John Forster (1812– 1876), Charles Dickens described a comic play he attended at the Strand Theatre in London. Dickens was enthralled by the performance of 19-year-old Marie Wilton11 in the Maid and the Magpie burlesque where Miss Wilton played a young boy. Dickens wrote: [the portrayal of] . . . the boy, Pippo . . . it is so stupendously like a boy, and unlike a woman, that it is perfectly free from offence. I have never seen such a thing. . . . the girl’s talent is unchallengeable. . .the cleverest girl I have ever seen on the stage in my time, and the most singularly original. Storey and Tillotson, 1995, p. 722

11

Marie Effie Wilton (1839–1921). She married the actor, Squire Bancroft, in 1867, and later (1897) became Lady Bancroft when her husband was knighted.

7 Charles Dickens

FIGURE 6 Marie Wilton (Lady Bancroft). From Carte de Visite, photograph by Adolphe Beau, Guy Little Collection. Museum no. S.142:13-2007. # Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Miss Wilton (Fig. 6) had a long history in the theater, particularly in burlesque (satiric light comedy) and later as a director and actor in drawing room comedies. When as a child actress, she injured her foot during a dance class, and was on crutches, she later wrote: “the only part I was able to play being poor Tiny Tim in Charles Dickens’s Christmas Carol” (Bancroft and Bancroft, 1889, p. 11). Decades later Marie Bancroft, proud of being singled out for praise by the famous writer and fellow performer, quoted Dickens’s 1858 letter in full in her memoirs (Bancroft and Bancroft, 1889, p. 38). Twelve years after being complemented by Dickens, Mrs. Bancroft, by then an accomplished actress and a successful stage director in partnership with her husband, petitioned Dickens . . . to grant actors an opportunity of hearing him give a reading . . . Dickens’s love for everything dramatic prompted him . . . to acquiesce at once, but his serious illness prevented the fulfilment [sic] at the time . . . . Bancroft and Bancroft, 1889, p. 138

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The theatrical reading eventually was held at a special matinee on January 21, 1870, the second of five dramatic readings in London that month. Dickens stood during the 2-h performances (based on Oliver Twist, including the gruesome murder of Nancy by Bill Sikes).12 Two days later Dickens wrote to his friend and editor, William Wills (1810–1880), reporting, I feel it was madness every to do it continuously . . . it takes me ten or twelve minutes to my wind back at all: I being in the meantime like the man who lost the fight ... Storey, 2002, p. 469; Tomalin, 2011, p. 384

Three more readings were scheduled for February and March. Dickens had been suffering from chronic leg pain, probably due to gout (Tomalin, 2011, p. 352), aggravated during his final speaking tour in America during 1867–1868, and at that time diagnosed by doctors as “a neuralgic affection of the right foot” (Slater, 2009, p. 583). Dickens was not adverse to alternative medicine; he had more than just dabbled in mesmerism.13 He tried several homeopathic cures to relieve his “American catarrh” (chronic colds and congestion) all to no avail (Tomalin, 2011, p. 366). In May, Mrs. Bancroft wrote to Dickens and suggested an unusual remedy for his neuralgic leg: a Pulvermacher Hydro-Electric Chain (Bancroft and Bancroft, 1889, p. 142). Dickens promptly replied: Gad’s Hill Place, Higham by Rochester, Kent. Tuesday Thirty First May 1870 My Dear Mrs. Bancroft, I am most heartily obliged to you for your kind note which I received here only last night, having come here from town circuitously,14 to get a little change of air on the road. My sense of your interest cannot be better proved than by my trying the remedy you recommend; and that I will do immediately. As I shall be in town on Thursday, my troubling you to order the magic band would be quite unjustifiable. I will use your name in applying for it, and will report the result after a fair trial. Whether Mr. Pulvermacher succeeds or fails as to the Neuralgia, I shall always consider myself under an obligation to him for having indirectly procured me the greatest pleasure of receiving a communication from you. For I hope I may lay claim to being one of the most earnest and delighted of your many artistic admirers. Believe me | Faithfully Yours Charles Dickens Storey, 2002, p. 541

12

See Slater (2009, pp. 589–590). See Tomalin (2011, p. 160 ff.) and Slater (2009, p. 232). 14 Gad’s Hill was about 30 miles east of London. 13

7 Charles Dickens

In reprinting this letter in their 1888 memoir, the Bancrofts substituted “it” for “the magic band,” “this remedy” for “Mr. Pulvermacher,” and “obligation to it” for “obligation to him,” undoubtedly to avoid becoming another unwitting testimonial in one of the Pulvermacher Company’s advertisements (Bancroft and Bancroft, 1889, p. 142). As suggested in a subsequent letter sent on behalf of Dickens (below) Mrs. Bancroft had indeed tried Pulvermacher’s “magic bands” and found “great relief.” It is unlikely that Pulvermacher claimed either Mrs. Bancroft or Charles Dickens as satisfied customers in their advertisements, since, as mentioned, testimonials by patients were rarely, if ever, used. On June 5, 1870, Dickens’s secretary sent an order for a “voltaic band”15 to Pulvermacher & Co. in London: Gad’s Hill Place Friday Third June 1870 Mr. Charles Dickens sends his compliments to Messrs. Pulvermacher and Co. and begs to say that he wishes to try a voltaic band across his right foot, as a remedy against what he supposes to be Neuralgia there (originating in overwalking in deep snow), to which he is occasionally liable. Mr. Dickens writes on the recommendation of Mrs. Bancroft, who assures him that she has derived great relief from a similar complaint from the use of one of these bands. If Messrs. Pulvermacher and Co. will be so good as send him one, he will remit a cheque for its cost by return of post, and will give it the fairest trial. Storey, 2002, p. 543

On the morning of June 8, Dickens posted a letter to Pulvermacher and Co., acknowledging receipt of the band and enclosing an over-payment and requesting a refund of the overage: Gad’s Hill Place Wednesday Eight June 1870 Mr. Charles Dickens begs to enclose Messrs. Pulvermacher and Co., a P.O. order for the band safely received. It has been obtained by mistake for a shilling or two more that the right amount. They can, if they please, return the balance in postage stamps. Storey, 2002, p. 548

That evening Dickens suffered a stroke and died the next day, never regaining consciousness (Slater, 2009, p. 613; Tomalin, 2011, p. 395). If the Pulvermacher magic band was put to the test, the patient did not survive to report the result (Fig. 7). Pulvermacher’s advertisement continued to be associated with Dickens and was one of several ads included among the first pages of an early edition of Dickens’ 15

A Dickens biographer mistakenly noted that Pulvermacher “used [Michael] Faraday’s 1831 invention of the induction coil to make his electrical chains” (Tomalin, 2011, Note 23, p. 483). The chain band was actually based on Alessandro Volta’s 1800 invention of the voltaic cell, although Pulvermacher did have an 1857 British patent based on Faraday’s discovery.

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FIGURE 7 How Dickens would have applied Pulvermacher’s chains to his ailing foot; the tub contains “acidulated” water (e.g., dilute vinegar). Steinert, 1853, p. 8.

novel, Bleak House serialized in 1852–1853 and later published in book form (Dickens, 1868, p. 543). The reprinted ad still included the endorsement by Dr. Golding Bird that he had repudiated (Fig. 8). Dickens’s second weekly literary periodical, All The Year Round, succeeded Household Words in 1859. After Dickens’s death it was edited by a son, Charles Dickens, Jr.; Pulvermacher’s ads appeared in several issues of the magazine between 1885 and 1893.

8 CONCLUSION Based on what is known, Flaubert and Dickens both avoided the ministrations of medical electricians, either trained or bogus. Flaubert obviously thought Pulvermacher’s chains to be bourgeois. In any event, had he been treated by the electrical methods of the day, he may not have written Madame Bovary (think Hemmingway). Dickens’s foot pain would not have been cured by the Pulvermacher placebo, as it was a serious physical condition. Voltaic, magnetic, and electromagnetic brushes, and head-to-foot voltaic and magnetic clothing were widely advertised during the latter part of the nineteenth century.

8 Conclusion

FIGURE 8 Top third of a Pulvermacher Advertisement included in an 1868 edition of Dickens’ novel, Bleak House; the bottom two-thirds listed Pulvermacher’s Agents in England, India, Gibraltar and Jamaica.

Several quackish medical electricians, including the I. L. Pulvermacher Galvanic Co. of Cincinnati, displayed their wares at the 1893 Columbian Exhibition on Chicago’s lakefront (Electrical Industries, 1893, p. 10). The London Electrical Review of September 28, 1894 published a letter from J. L. Pulvermacher & Co. (Pulvermacher himself had died ten years before) opining: “all curative articles that possessed real merit should be sold through medical men only, and . . . advertising the articles was degrading.” The Company proposed to an Official of the Royal College of Physicians that an Act of Parliament be promoted to require medical appliances and other “curative articles” to be licensed and sold only to medical men or by prescription, and advertised only in professional publications. “Much to [their] surprise,” this idea was rejected and Pulvermacher & Co. were “advised to go on advertising.” The unresolved problem, both then and now: how could the government determine “real merit”? Today the successors of these electro-quacks advertise on the Internet. Although much discussed by medical electricians since the days of Franklin, an Italian psychiatrist and neuropathologist, Ugo Cerletti (1877–1963), has been credited with pioneering electroshock therapy in 1938 (Endler, 1988, p. 7). It is conceivable that some reported successful electroshock cures for depression were simply that the patients declared themselves no longer depressed to avoid the stress of further painful and prolonged treatment. The novelist Ernest Hemmingway was treated by shock therapy, blamed by some for his suicide (Brian, 1988, Chapt. 13, pp. 248 ff.; Chapt.16, pp. 308 ff.). Writers Sylvia Plath and Ken Kesey both wrote semiautobiographical novels, incorporating their own experiences with shock therapy.16 Like Hemmingway, Plath committed suicide. 16

Plath, S (1963), The Bell Jar, Harper & Row, New York, 1971. Kesey, K (1962), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Viking Press, New York. For more on Plath and her experiences with ECT, see the chapter by Kellner in the companion Progress in Brain Research volume (Vol. 206), Literature, Neurology, and Neuroscience: Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders.

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Electroshock therapy was typically administered without an anesthetic, but today we have Electroconvulsive Therapy, or ECT, done under anesthesia. ECT remains controversial due to unpredictable results and side-effects, such as memory loss. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is presently ambivalent about giving full approval to ECT treatment regimes (Brown, 2011). Recently, magnetic therapy using high-flux MRI-grade magnets, known as transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, has been claimed to (sometimes) cure depression. TMS appears to be benign, possibly because it has no discernible physical effect. It is perhaps but a very effective (and expensive) placebo. Two TMS machines have been approved for treatment of depression by the FDA (Cassels, 2013, p. 1 ff.; FDA, 2011, pp. 1–149).

Acknowledgments I am indebted to Prof. Stanley Finger for excellent editorial suggestions. Portions of this paper were adapted from R. K. Waits, 2013, The Medical Electricians, J•IV•IX Publications, Sunnyvale, CA.

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