William S. Eidelman, M.D.
|
Natural
Medicine |
Notice For Patients
Office Hours & Services
Who is
William S. Eidelman, M.D.?
Dr.
Eidelman's Office: 1654 Cahuenga Blvd
Los Angeles CA 90028
corner of Hollywood Blvd
entrance in middle of International Newsstand
(323) 463-3295
(323)
463-3740 fax
Medical Marijuana and the Supreme Court’s Raich Decision
The Bio-Energy Revolution
When electricity was discovered in the eighteenth century, mystics and believers in religion hoped that the soul could be proven to exist, flowing as electricity through the body. After all, they had been describing the soul as energy for eons.
Initially, when scientists could find no evidence for electricity or the soul, the mystics and religionists countered that it must be there, but we just didn't have the sophisticated instruments for finding it.
Well, now we have the sophisticated instruments, and we've discovered the body is very electromagnetic, with all the different kinds of electromagnetism you can imagine.
What I'm going to do here is to give some background, the scientific history of our concepts of bio-energy dating back many years. There are many implications for therapies, including hands-on energy healing, acupuncture, homeopathy, and numerous other modalities of applying electromagnetic currents and fields.
The Historical Perspective
The story begins with Luigi Galvani, in Italy, in the 1780s. Galvani saw sparks jump into frog legs his wife had hanging out to dry. When the sparks hit the legs, the muscles contracted, and the frog legs kicked!
Galvani, a diligent scientist, researched the phenomenon in great depth (given the technology of that time period), and believed he had proven that the body did have electricity. In 1791, he made the dramatic announcement to Europe's top scientists that the basic life force, the elan vital, flows through the nervous system, and that he had proven it.
Only two years after Galvani's public announcement, Alessandro Volta made a dramatic announcement of his own.
Volta said that Galvani had actually discovered a new form of electricity--the battery. The electric currents that Galvani had found, Volta claimed, were actually caused by the salt ions in the body.
Volta claimed there was no "animal electricity" and no evidence for the soul. Even though Galvani's work was extensive, and deserved closer attention, he received no support in the scientific community.
For Galvani, this was a terrible slap in the face. He published one more report anonymously which gave further evidence for his position, but this also received no attention. He finally gave up research and died miserable, in poverty.
Volta became rich and famous developing the battery.
* * * * * * *
Then, in the 1840's, Emil Dubois-Reymond demonstrated a measurable electrical impulse traveling down a nerve. He, like Galvani, believed he had found the life current. So it was DuBois-Reymond's turn to make the public claim that electricity ran through the nervous system, like currents running through wires, and that the soul now had a scientific basis.
It was soon shown that the impulse he had found could not possibly be a true electric current, for two reasons. First, the impulse traveled much too slowly for electricity, and second, nerves didn't have the proper insulation or resistance to conduct a current. They just didn't measure up as wires!
It would be nice to think of this argument as a pure scientific debate, but this was not exactly the case. The question of bio-electricity and the existence of the soul was a highly charged, emotional issue.
The "pure scientists" were very anxious to disprove any religious or mystical ideas, and with this vested interest, they were not exactly objective. This is still happening now.
The desire to disprove is very subjective!
* * * * * * *
But if DuBois-Reymond's nerve impulse wasn't an electric current, what was it? Julius Bernstein, a student of DuBois-Reymond, solved the mystery in 1868. This is what he found:
All cell membranes have an electrical polarization. Sodium ions, with a positive charge (atoms missing one electron), sit on the outside of the membrane. Chloride ions, with a negative charge (atoms having an extra electron), sit on the inside of the membrane.
When the nerve is stimulated, at the top of the nerve, the ions switch places across the membrane, changing the electrical polarization for a moment. Then they return to their normal places. This change of electrical potential moves down the nerve as if it was a true current. Bernstein called it an "action potential." Bernstein's hypothesis has been proven correct. A brilliant piece of work.