The Spark of Life: Electricity in the Human Body (41 page)

Further Reading

Here are suggestions for further reading. I only include books and articles that are of general interest and readily accessible. For those who wish to know more, a more detailed bibliography may be found on my website.

Books

Ashcroft, Frances (2000),
Ion Channels and Disease
, San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Bakken, Earl (1999),
One Man’s Full Life
, Minneapolis, MI: Medtronic Inc.

Bryson, Bill (ed.) (2010),
Seeing Further
, London: Harper Press.

Darwin, Charles (1859),
On the Origin of Species
, London: John Murray.

Darwin, Charles (1875),
Insectivorous Plants
, London: John Murray.

Finger, Stanley and Marco Piccolino (2011),
The Shocking History of Electric Fishes
, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gregory, Richard (1997),
Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing
, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hodgkin, Alan (1992),
Chance and Design: Reminiscences of Science in Peace and War
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hofmann, Albert (1980),
LSD: My Problem Child
, New York: McGraw-Hill.

Holmes, Richard (2009),
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science
, London: Harper Press.

von Humboldt, Alexander ([1834] 1995),
Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent
, London: Penguin Books.

Huxley, Aldous (1954),
The Doors of Perception
, London: Chatto and Windus.

Ings, Simon (2007),
The Eye: A Natural History
, London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Lane, Nick (2009),
Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution
, London: Profile Books.

Lomas, Robert (1999),
The Man who Invented the Twentieth Century
, London: Headline Press.

Martin, Paul (2003),
Counting Sheep
, London: Flamingo.

Medawar, Jean and David Pyke (2001),
Hitler’s Gift: Scientists who Fled Nazi Germany
, London: Piatkus.

The Oxford Companion to the Body
(2001), Colin Blakemore and Sheila Jennett (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The Oxford Companion to the Mind
(2004), Richard Gregory (ed.), 2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Powers, Francis Gary and Curt Gentry (1971),
Operation Overflight
, London: Hodder & Stoughton.

de Quincey, Thomas ([1822], 1986),
Confessions of an English Opium Eater
, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Quintilian (2002),
The Orator’s Education
, trans. D. L. Russell, Oxford: Loeb Classical Library.

Raeburn, Paul (1995),
The Last Harvest
, New York: Simon and Schuster.

Rippon, Nicola (2009),
The Plot to Kill Lloyd George
, London: Wharncliffe Books.

Sacks, Oliver (1996),
The Island of the Colour-blind
. London: Picador.

Sacks, Oliver (1986)
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
, London: Picador.

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft ([1818]),
Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus
. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Schmidt-Nielsen, Knut (1997),
Animal Physiology
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Streatfeild, Dominic (2001),
Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography
, London: Virgin Publishing.

Syson, Lydia (2008),
Doctor of Love: James Graham and his Celestial Bed
. Richmond: Alma Books.

Wesley, John (1760),
Desideratum: Or, Electricity Made Plain and Useful. By a Lover of Mankind, and of Common Sense
, London: W. Flexney.

Articles

Feldberg, W. (1977), ‘The early history of synaptic and neuromuscular transmission by acetylcholine: reminiscences of an eye-witness’, in A. L. Hodgkin et al.,
The Pursuit of Nature
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Harlow, J. M. (1848), ‘Passage of an Iron Rod Through the Head’,
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal,
vol. 39, pp. 389–93.

Hodgkin, A. L. (1977), ‘Chance and design in electrophysiology: an informal account of certain experiments on nerve carried out between 1934 and 1952’, in A. L. Hodgkin et al.,
The Pursuit of Nature
.

Horgan, J. (2005), ‘The forgotten era of brain chips’,
Scientific American
(October 2005).

Kalmijn, A. J. (1971), ‘The electric sense of sharks and rays’,
Journal of Experimental Biology
, vol. 55, 371–83.

Kellaway, P. (1946), ‘The part played by electric fish in the early history of bioelectricity and electrotherapy’,
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
, vol. 20, pp. 112–37.

Krider, E. P. (2006), ‘Benjamin Franklin and Lightning Rods’,
Physics Today
(January 2006),

Lissmann, H. W. (1951), ‘Continuous electrical signals from the tail of the fish Gymnarchus niloticus Cuv.’,
Nature
, vol. 167, p. 201.

Loewi, O. (1960), ‘Autobiographic sketch’,
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
, vol. 4, pp. 3–25.

Miesenböck, G. (2008), ‘Neural light show: scientists use genetics to map and control brain functions’,
Scientific American
(September 2008).

Quinton, P. (1999), ‘Physiological basis of cystic fibrosis: a historical perspective’,
Physiological Reviews
, vol. 79, S3–S22.

Acknowledgements

I could not have written this book without a great deal of help. I am grateful to many of my scientific colleagues for reading the chapters, helping ensure my facts are accurate and providing invaluable comments on content and style. I thank Richard Boyd, David Clapham, Nathan Denton, Carolina Lahmann, Chris Miller, Mike Sanguinetti and Walter Stühmer for bravely reading the whole book. For reading individual chapters or parts of chapters, I thank Jonathan Ashmore, Mike Bennett, Pietro Corsi, Keith Dorrington, Clive Ellory, Ian Forsythe, Uta Frith, Fiona Gribble, Andrew Halestrap, Judy Heiny, Edith Hummler, Peter Hunter, John Mollon, Keith Moore, Erwin Neher, Denis Noble, David Paterson, Marco Piccolino, Andy King, Geoffrey Raisman, Bernhard Rossier, Julian Schroeder, Paolo Tammaro, Tilly Tansey, Irene Tracy, Louise Upton and Gary Yellen. I thank Peter Brown for help with the Latin and Greek references, and for translating some of the original texts; Michaela Iberl for translating some German papers; Mathilde Lafond for help with the French translations; and Vivien Raisman for providing a modern translation of the Edwin Smith papyrus. Marco Piccolini and Bryan Ward-Perkins supplied historical information and advice, Andrew Forge provided the pictures of the hair cells, and Peter Atkins lent me his Galvani texts. Bruce Barker Benfield at the Bodleian Library very kindly showed me Mary Shelley’s original manuscripts of
Frankenstein
and unearthed a letter from Percy Bysshe Shelley. I am particularly grateful to Peter and Karin Hunter for providing sanctuary in their beautiful home in New Zealand while I struggled with the first two chapters. Many friends and colleagues supplied me with interesting stories and I apologize to those whose stories or scientific research I was unable to include. Needless to say, any errors or infelicities that remain are my own.

There is an Italian proverb that states ‘Se non è vero, è ben trovato’, which roughly translates as ‘Even if it’s not true, it is a good story’. I have tried to ensure that the science is factually correct, but it is more difficult to be as confident that the many historical stories I tell are completely accurate or correctly attributed. In some cases, names have been changed to protect an individual’s identity.

I thank my friend and wonderful agent Felicity Bryan for encouraging me to write another book and never losing confidence that I would eventually do so; my editors at Penguin, Helen Conford and William Goodlad, for valuable comments, wise advice and listening to my writer’s agonies; Louisa Watson and Tertia Softley for their careful copy-editing; and Patrick Loughran for his assistance with the pictures. I am indebted to Ronan Mahon for the beautiful line drawings. I am also grateful to my brother and sister for valuable criticism and advice, and my fellow wordsmith, Chris Miller, for helping to coin a few choice phrases. Most of all, I thank Tertia Softley and Iara Cury, who tracked down many obscure articles, winkled many books out of the Bodleian Library and generally kept me sane, as well as the members of my research team for their patience and forbearance when I spent the weekends working on this book instead of writing their papers, reading their theses or applying for more grant money to fund our research.

Credits

Image “Cerebelo de paloma: celulas de Purkinje y granulares,” reprinted by permission of Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Cajal Legacy. Instituto Cajal (CSIC), Madrid, Spain.

Oil painting by Edmund Bristow (
Dispensing of medical electricity
, 1824) reprinted by permission of Wellcome Library, London.

Excerpt from “Goodness Gracious Me” by Herbert Kretzmer reprinted with permission of Berlin Associates Limited.

Excerpt from Brian Turner,
Here, Bullet
reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books.

Extract from “Newdigate Poem” from Verses by Hilaire Belloc reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop.

Excerpt from
Discourses
by Jo Shapcott, published in
Discourses: Poems for the Royal Institution
, 2002. Reprinted by permission of the Royal Institution.

Excerpt from “The Hanging Man” from
The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath
, edited by Ted Hughes, Copyright © 1960, 1965, 1971, 1981 by the Estate of Sylvia Plath. Editorial material copyright © by Ted Hughes. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers and Faber and Faber Ltd.

Excerpt from “The Tender Place” from
Birthday Letters
by Ted Hughes, Copyright © 1998 by Ted Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC, and Faber and Faber Ltd.

Excerpt from Percy Bysshe Shelley letter to Ralph Wedgwood (15 Dec. 1810) held by University College. Reprinted with permission from the Master and Fellows of University College, Oxford.

Index

Note: page numbers in
italics
refer to figures,
and those with suffix ‘n’ refer to notes.

acetylcholine 82–6, 89, 91–8, 104, 165–7, 270

acetylcholine receptor
89,
92, 96,104

   effect of nicotine 260

   in myasthenia gravis 98

   in torpedo ray 127

   muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (heart) 165–6

acetylcholinesterase 95–8

achromatopsia 202–3

aconite (aconitine) 75–6

action potential
62

   all-or-none nature 58–9, 65, 69, 105

   in electric fish electroplaques 123

   in heart cells
147
, 148, 156–9, 168

   in muscle fibres 104–5, 111–13

   in nerve cells
62
, 65–67, 69

   in plants 189–91

   mechanism
62
, 65–67, 69

   transmission of 56–7

   
see also
nerve impulse

acupuncture 278

addiction 257–9, 262

adenosine 256–7

adrenaline 163–4, 167–8,175

Adrian, Edgar 59–61

Adrian, Richard 110–12

agent SS
see
saxitoxin

agent TZ
see
saxitoxin

Agre, Peter 180–81, 313n

Aldini, Giovanni 23, 28–9

alpha-toxin,
Staphylococcus aureus
183

alternating current (AC) 298–301

Alzheimer’s disease 270, 311

amber 10–11

amnesia

   drug-induced 280, 283

   electroconvulsive therapy 295

amoebic dysentery 183

amp (A) 37, 121, 125, 127, 298

   definition of 34, 36

Ampère, André-Marie 6, 34

amphetamine 259

ampullae of Lorenzini 130, 132, 314n

amygdala 240, 257, 265, 268, 273

amyl nitrate 164

anaesthesia 95, 237–8

   general 279–80, 282

   local 223–4

   malignant hyperthermia 114–16

anaesthetics 278–81

   local 223–4

   general 114, 280–81

Andersen, Dorothy 178

angina 163–4

animal electricity 6, 22, 24–6, 32

   differences from mains electricity 36–7

antidepressants 263

apoptosis 184–6

aquaporins 180–82

arrow poisons 52, 920–23

artichoke, globe 213, 316n

Ashley, Jack 307

Ashmore, Jonathan 208

ATP 45, 52, 312n

atrial fibrillation 149–50

atrioventricular node
142
, 143, 148, 156

Atropa belladonna
(deadly nightshade) 166

atropine 97, 166

auditory nerve 205, 207–8, 306–7

Aum Shinrikyo sect 95–6

axons 55–7,
56,
57,
232–6

   in development 185

   myelinated
57,
57–8

   squid giant 61–6, 68

Bacillus thuringiensis
183–4

bacteria 100, 178, 182, 230

   bacterial toxins 71–2, 80–1, 313n

   channel-forming proteins 42, 182–4

Bakken, Earl 151–2

basilar membrane
206
, 206–7, 209

batrachotoxin 76

bats, vampire 199, 221

battery, electric 40, 152, 285

   early (voltaic pile)
25–6, 28, 30, 31,
122

   biological 37, 43, 120, 123–5

Beethoven, Ludwig van 209–10, 212

Békésy, Georg von 206–7

Belloc, Hilaire 297

Bennett, Alan 210

beta-blockers 161,164

beta-cells, pancreatic 2–4, 99, 312n

Bichat, Xavier 29

Bingen, Hildegard von 245

biological control agents 183–4

biological weapons 74–5, 77

birds 76, 78, 166, 199, 220, 249–50, 275

black smokers 41

Blake, William 192, 193, 262, 315n

blindsight 242

blind spot 195

blood–brain barrier 56, 58, 70, 230, 250

BOAA (β-
N
-oxalyl-L-alanine) 248

Bond, James (007) 72

Booth, Herbert 94

botulinum toxin 80–81, 92, 313n

botox 80–81

bradycardia 148

brain
228

   amygdala 240, 265, 268, 273

   blood supply 229–30

   brain waves 236–7, 273–4

   cerebellum
228,
229, 269

   cerebral cortex 227–8, 235, 270, 273, 274

   corpus callosum 227,
228

   el
ectrical stimulation 235–6, 304–6, 309, 310

   forebrain 227–8, 257

   fusiform gyrus 244

   glia cells 229

   grey matter 229

   hippocampus
228
, 267–9, 276

   imaging 238–9, 283, 309–10

   limbic system 217

   motor cortex 235, 238–40, 269

   nucleus accumbens 257, 258, 261–2

   olfactory bulb 217

   prefrontal cortex 234, 240–41

   reward centre 238, 257, 259, 261, 277

   somatosensory cortex 235–6

   surgery 236, 304–5

   thalamus 274

   visual cortex 236, 240, 242, 245

   white matter 229

brain damage 233–5

   Alzheimer’s disease 270

   epilepsy 253–4

   migraine 244–5

‘brainbow’ mouse 232

brainstem
228
, 228–9, 230, 274

Brillat-Savarin, Anthelme 213–14

Broca, Paul 234–5

Broca’s area 234, 235, 238

Brock, Lawrence 87–8

Brown, Harold 300, 301

Brugada syndrome 157–8

Bryant, Shirley 109–12, 116

Byatt, A. S. 296

Caenorhabditis elegans
233

Cajal, Ramón y 231, 232

Calabar bean 97–8

calcium channels 197, 312n

   in disease 90–91, 114–15, 245

   in neurotransmitter release
89,
90, 197, 278

   in skeletal muscle contraction 105, 112–14,
113

   in contraction of the heart 156, 158–9, 163, 165, 168

calcium ions 37, 42

   in cell death 248, 250

   in contraction of the heart 156, 158–9, 163

   in muscle contraction 112–14,
113

   in neurotransmitter release 88–92,
89,
197

calcium stores 112–13, 114, 156, 158, 163

camphor 221

capacitor 14–5

capsaicin 220–21

cardiac arrest 22, 153–5

cardiac arrhythmia 150, 157–8, 159–61, 162

cardiopulmonary resuscitation 22, 154

carnivorous plants 189–90, 315n

Carroll, Lewis 245

Carson, Rachel 78

Castor and Pollux 265

cataplexy 275

cataracts 200–201

Caterina, Mike 220

catfish 117–19,
118
, 130

Catsper channels 172–3

Celestial Bed 290

cell 38

   ion concentrations 39–41

   origins 40–41

   membrane 38–41

   programmed cell death 184–6

cerebellum
228,
229, 269

cerebral cortex 227–8, 235–6, 238–42, 245, 266, 269, 270, 273–4

Cerletti, Ugo 293

channel-forming proteins 42, 182–4

channel rhodopsin 271

channelopathies
see
ion channel diseases

Charak 248

Châtres, Duc de 35–6

Cheema, Lakhvinder 75

chemical messengers 51, 100–101

   
see also
intracellular messengers, neurotransmitter

chilli peppers 219–20

‘Chinese restaurant syndrome’ 250

chloride channels

   cystic fibrosis (CFTR) 178–9

   in muscle 105, 110–12,
113

   in plants 189

   startle disease, glycine receptors 251–2

chloride (ions) 37, 105, 110, 178–9, 189, 251

chloroform 279–80

cholera 179–80

Chondrodendron tomentosum
93

Church of Scientology 303

clams 72–4

Clapham, David 172

Claviceps purpurea
264

Clostridium botulinum
80

   
see also
botulinum toxin

Coca-Cola 258

cocaine 258–9

cochlea
204
, 205–7, 306–7

   cochlear amplifier 208–9

   cochlear implants 209, 306–7

Cockcroft, John 15

Cole, Kenneth 63–4, 65–6

Coleridge, Samuel 277

colour blindness 201–3, 315n

colour vision 195–6, 198–203, 241–2

Colquhoun, David 45

complement 183

cones 194–6, 197, 198

Conium maculatum
94–5

consciousness 264

   origin of 281–4

   loss of 22, 160, 253, 273, 279–81

Cook, James 54–5, 69

Coombs, Jack 87–88

corn
see
maize

cornea 193,
194,
315n

cortex (of brain)

   cerebral 227–8, 235, 270, 273, 274,

   motor 235, 238–40, 269

   prefrontal 234, 240–41

   somatosensory 235–6

   visual 236, 240, 242, 245

cot death 160–61

courtship

   fish 138–9

   
Drosophila
271–2

   praire voles 261

crayfish 272

Cream, Thomas Neill 252

curare 52, 92–5

current

   alternating 298–301

   definition of 34, 36–7

   direct 298–9

   electrocution 21–2, 296–8

   war of currents 298–300

Curtis, Howard 63–4

cyclic GMP 164, 196–7, 203

cynarin 213

cystic fibrosis 177–9

cystic fibrosis transmembrane receptor (CFTR) 178–9

Dale, Henry 83, 84–7

D’Alibard, Thomas-François 17

Dalton, John 201–2

dantrolene 115–16

Darwin, Charles 41, 119, 133–4, 189, 313n

Davy, Humphrey 278–9

DDT 77–8

deafness 160, 209–12

   cochlear implants 209, 306–7

death 30–31, 114, 150, 151, 152, 177, 179, 202, 237, 276, 282

   capital punishment 167–8, 300–301, 314n

   cell death 149, 170–1, 184–6, 229, 247, 248, 270