After seven-year-old Eleanor Johnston died suddenly at her home in a Philadelphia suburb in 1902, the resulting Coroner's report attributed her death to "cardiac arrest in syncopal form" resulting from "shock and convulsions due to fright." While the Coroner concluded that the little girl's death was unusual, he argued that it was "not without precedent" though this was scant comfort the Eleanor's parents.
But for Archie Frederick Collins, the death of Eleanor Johnston, and others like her, suggested a far more exotic cause: the effects of electric waves produced by lightning. A prolific science writer and amateur scientist, Collins had watched the early development of "wireless telegraphy" (a.k.a. radio) including Heinrich Hertz's discovery of radio waves in 1887 as well as Guglielmo Marconi developing the first practical radiotelegraph transmitter and receiver in 1895. Almost inevitably, this led to widespread speculation about how this could apply to research into the electrical nature of the human brain. Was it possible that radio waves and other electrical phenomena, including the electrical influence of lightning storms, could produce changes in the brain, and even deaths such as with Eleanor Johnston?
As Collins pointed out in a 1902 newspaper story, a powerful electric storm took place near Eleanor's home not long before her death and that, as the storm came closer and the lightning flashes came more regularly, Eleanor began displaying all of the classic signs of extreme fear. He added that, "a bolt of lightning struck a house a quarter mile away and the life of the child was extinguished in the same instant." To bolster his case, he argued that "It has long been observed that approaching electrical storms, though they be hundreds of miles distant, produce a marked action on those afflicted with certain forms of nervousness, on gouty persons, and rheumatics long before the most delicate meteorological instruments register that change."
Along with people able to predict storms due to feeling "twinges" in their bodies, there were also numerous reports of people experiencing seizures when lightning struck nearby, even if they were not directly affected. Since lightning storms produced radio waves that could be directly measured with the right instruments, couldn't some extremely "sensitive" human brains could do the same?
All of which led to a rather remarkable (albeit bizarre) series of experiments that Collins carried out in the first few years of the 20th century. His research was based on the use of a coherer, or signal detector, an integral part of the earliest radio receivers. A coherer consisted of a glass tube containing two electrodes made of either brass or silver with silver filings or carbon granules between them. When an electric current was applied to the plugs, the filings would "cohere" (cling together). Using a galvanometer to measure electric current, the needle of the galvanometer would then swing back and forth according to the wavelength and amplitude of the radio waves being detected.
Using a carbon coherer as a model, Collins developed an experimental apparatus involving the brain of a freshly-killed sheep he had bought from his local butcher. After finding evidence of cohering when this brain was exposed to electric waves, he then tried the same experiment with cat brains. Though he lived near a zoologist who could supply him with all the animal brains he needed, Collins soon decided to try the same experiment with a living cat.
This involved luring an unfortunate house cat into his laboratory where it was then anesthetized and then operated on to expose the cat's brain (the surgery was carried out by the zoologist) and having two electrical probes inserted into holes drilled into the cat's skull. As Collins later observed, passing an electric current through the wires convinced him that "it seemed evident that the cat was semi-consciously aware of the electric waves." What was more, he reported that coming in contact with the cat's brain while the current was running led to Collins and the two men observing the experiment to experience a "peculiar tingling sensation" that he interpreted as more proof that brains could be sensitive to electric waves (the experiment only ended when the unfortunate cat finally died).
Having gone as far as he could with animal brains, Collins then decided to repeat his experiment with a human brain. After repeated attempts at getting a fresh brain from different medical researchers, he finally found a Philadelphia pathologist who agreed to let him use a brain from one of his patients. Traveling to Philadelphia as soon as the brain became available, Collins was thrilled to hear weather reports predicting an electrical storm being on the way. Carefully setting up his electrical apparatus, much as he had done with his cat, he began his experiment using earphones to listen for changes in the brain's coherence during the course of the storm.
As he later wrote, "I was almost dazed in realizing that here at last, I had the absolute evidence direct from the lightning itself, and that the electric waves emitted by it produced produced a variable coherence of the brain. Here, no artifice was used to manufacture the waves, but the same waves that killed little Eleanor Johnston caused the galvanometer needle (which was attached to the brain) to vibrate like a living thing, and the brain matter when the storm was at its height produced pulsating currents of the most pronounced type, through the medium of the brain acting as a self-righting coherer. Now all of us (Collins and the two observers) watched the phenomenon of electric waves manifesting themselves through the medium of the human brain." He also suggest that many people, sensing the effect that electrical storms had on their brains, managed to protect themselves by covering their heads with blankets though further research was likely needed.
Though he published his results, along with a complete description of his research method, in a prominent electrical engineering journal, it soon became apparent that nobody else was able to replicate his work. The general consensus was that either Collins was simply finding what he wanted to find (the dreaded experimenter bias) or else some other part of his radio apparatus was picking up the radio waves.
Somewhat disappointed at not having made medical history, Collins gave up his brain research and devoted himself to more practical pursuits, including starting his own wireless telephony company in 1903 and filing several patents for improvements in radio design. He also tried to develop the first true radiotelephone and, to some extent, he succeeded though his increasingly grandiose claims soon got him in trouble with the U.S. government and a prison term for mail fraud.
Still, it was Collins' success as a writer that seems to be his greatest claim to fame and generations of scientists and radio enthusiasts would later credit him for inspiring them. As legacies go, it seems impressive enough and, best of all, no animals were sacrificed in the process...
