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THE WAY I SEE IT By NEVILLE WILLIAMS Feeling really crook? You may need an electron transfer! If you're curious about the above heading, move over. After reading a brochure referred to me by a NSW reader, so am I! "Biological electron transfer" might herald a whole new concept in medical treatment - or it may simply be a further debatable example of a century-long pursuit of the supposedly therapeutic properties of electricity. It seems likely that the reader who forwarded the brochure was reacting to discussion of another health matter in the September issue under the heading"Could We End Up Drinking Nickel-Cadmium Cocktails?" It had to do with an interview, brought to my notice by T. A. of Par- .· ramatta, NSW. Visiting Canadian environmentalist, Dr David Suzuki, had claimed that used nickelcadmium batteries should be recycled, to prevent their contents from becoming an environmental health hazard via council garbage tips. While not necessarily rejecting Dr Suzuki's warning, I said that I could find no support for his concern in technical literature, or by academics : or the battery companies themselves. Nor have any readers, since then, taken up my invitation to shed further light on the subject. I wonder whether they/you will be more forthcoming on the supposed therapeutic benefits of electricity? This time around, I am indebted to I. H. of Port Macquarie, on the north coast of NSW. To a letter, 62 SILICON CHIP directed principally to Leo Simpson, he adds the following footnote: Enclosed is a pamphlet from a supplier of vitamins, etc, detailing their latest wonder material germanium. I think you or Neville Williams could write a very good article on the claims made for this substance. On receipt of the above, my first reaction was to look out another "medical" pamphlet which had come my way recently, via the letterbox. Reading and comparing the two, I began to wonder how old the apparent interest might be in the supposed benefits of electrical. therapy. Seeking a possible clue, I searched through a century-old article by Andrew Wilson PhD, FRPS, &c (Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities) entitled "Nerves or No Nerves, or the Art of Feeling". Andrews admits to being at a complete loss in trying to explain nerve action, attributing it only to some as yet unknown mechanism which he thereafter refers to as ''nerve force". I quote: " ... a mechanism so subtle and incomprehensible, that the greatest authorities of our day own their in- ability to solve its depths, and admit their helplessness with the best possible grace." Overlooked or ignored? There is no hint in the article that "nerve force" could have anything to do with electrical phenomena or that nerves and/or muscles could respond in any way to electrical stimulation. I found this intriguing, to say the least, because in 1791 Luigi Galavini, Professor of Anatomy in Bologna, Italy, had published his paper "Animal Electricity or Galvanism", detailing his memorable experiments with frogs legs. Five years later (1796), Allessandro Volta had suggested an apparent link between Galvanic electricity and that produced by chemical means. How or when academics like Andrew Wilson and/or neo-medical entrepreneurs caught up with these century-old observations I'm not sure. But I do know that, in the early 1920s, my grandfather showed me a do-it-yourself medical gadget that he'd bought some years previously to treat rheumatism, gout, lumbago, sciatica, arthritis or whatever else, of that nature, people suffered from in those days. I can recall it only as a clinical looking black box, complete with knobs, switches, fabric-covered leads, nickel plated pads and hand grips. When connected to a battery, it buzzed audibly and produced high voltage electricity which could be applied to the body or between the hands, as per the instructions. ponded with a writ for one million dollars in damages, returnable in the state of Texas. When he had not proceeded with the action twelve months later, RADIO NEWS repeated the allegations and backed them up with a detailed technical report on a Kiro-Vox, which they had managed to acquire in the meantime, complete with the maker's official instructions. A "squegging" oscillator The circuit of the "Kiro-Vox", as published by "Radio News" in December 1925. While it contains two variable capacitors and two variable inductors (variometers) it is basically very similar to a 1-valve regenerative receiver. One could feel it doing its job (it produced a tingling sensation, anyway) but whether it was more beneficial than other contemporary treatments seemed to be open to argument. I refer to patent medicines, patent liniments and that incredible procedure of exposing one's bared rump/hip/thigh to "injections" by a jar full of angry bees. Yes, my grandfather resorted to this on a number of occasions, but · whether apis mellifera (bee) therapy cured the original pain or merely masked it was equally open to question! A "pure swindle" While there have been doubts about the therapeutic merit of beestings, potions and old-time electric shocking coils, there was certainly no indecision on the part of the (American) RADIO NEWS staff, in December 1924, when they reported on two "wonderful" new diagnostic instruments: the "Neurophonometer" and its electrically identical twin called. the ''KiroVox" - apparently derived from "Chiro". According to RADIO NEWS, both were being "foisted on the public" by a so-called Doctor Rogers and both, they said, were "pure swindles". Their opinion was based mainly on pretentious claims and explana- tions, presumably intended to attract the public and self-styled practitioners, but which made no technical sense either to RADIO NEWS laboratory staff or to qualified physicians and surgeons, from whom they had sought medical opinion. The purported role of the new instruments was to help physicians locate "impingements and sublaxations" - the latter (according to Webster's dictionary) signifying a partial or incomplete dislocation. They were said to achieve this by measuring the resistance of the nerves and so locating the point at which there was a constriction of the "life flow" - whatever that meant. Apart from anything else, the idea of being able to isolate and measure nerve resistance by way of external pads and contact probes defied common sense. Any indication so obtained would depend primarily on contact/skin resistance and on the total body resistance between the contact areas. RADIO NEWS rounded off the first article with an offer of $1000 (a substantial sum in those days) plus all expenses if the builder of the device(s) could demonstrate to a panel of qualified scientific and medical authorities that his equipment had a genuine therapeutic value. To this, "Doctor" Rogers res- As indicated by the accompanying circuit, it appeared to have been contrived from a contemporary 1-valve (UV-201A) regenerative receiver, with enough bits and pieces added to account for four 0-100 panel dials, plus a meter showing battery voltage, a filament rheostat, binding posts, &c. Assembled on a panel, mounted in a black carrying case with removeable lid, and plugging into a separate power supply (battery) box, it looked sufficiently convincing to boost the standing of a practicioner lacking more formal qualifications. A larger than normal grid capacitor (.005µF instead of .00025µF) ensured that it would be prone to grid blocking or squegging, and the multiplicity of controls provided the opportunity for any amount of pretentious fiddling to set the audible squegging tone to the desired frequency. Setting up involved clamping a pad to the patient's forehead, placing the search electrode on the skin under the occipital protuberance and adjusting the oscillation tone to a "singing" sound, like a "high pitched tone from a horn", not "coarse like a foghorn". This procedure was described in the instructions as "tuning the patient in". This done, the diagnostic procedure involved searching down the spine until the oscillation stopped and drawing conclusions about the impingements and sublaxations by noting this position and also doing some calculations based on the 0-100 dial readings. Pure buncombe RADIO NEWS described all this as "the purest buncombe, just simply JANUARY 1989 63 THE WAY I SEE IT - CTD bait for the gullible .. . if the ludicrousness of it all does not strike you, we give up!" Whether the Kiro-Vox and Neurophonometer survived the acrid criticism by the late Hugo Gernsback and his team we have no way of knowing but we have not heard of any more such devices since then. On the other hand, high voltage shocking coils or pulsers are still with us in a variety of forms, mostly transistorised, and recommended in sales brochures for the treatment of lumbago, sciatica and arthritis; head, neck and back pains; tendonitis, muscle and joint pains; sporting injuries and post operative and amputation "phantom" pains. Some are supposed to be used in conjunction with acupuncture points - and at that point I give up. If the medical fraternity itself is at odds about acupuncture generally, how is a mere layman to decide whether it makes sense or otherwise to stimulate acupuncture points with a needle, a digital wavetrain, or the field from some gismo containing a powerful magnet? It so happened that, while writing this, I met up with a friend who was wearing an electronic pulsing device on his belt. After explaining what is was, he confided: "The physio suggested I try it but whether it's doing me any good, I wouldn't have a clue" . Shades of the 1920s! Technical jargon If the story of the Kiro-Vox emphasises nothing else, it certainly does draw attention to the use of pretentious technical jargon, capable of impressing a layman but making little sense to a technically informed reader. That brings me back to the pamphlet forwarded to me by I. H. and the notion of biological electron transfer whatever that signifies. The bold heading reads: "Germanium - one of the most exciting health-giving substances ever discovered". The pamphlet goes on the say that it was used in the USA in 1922 to treat anaemia, and subsequently by the Russians for its "unique" rejuvenative properties. This, despite the fact that germanium is normally regarded as being highly toxic. Nothing daunted, and allegedly funded by the Japanese Government, an "inquisitive engineer" , Dr Kusuhiko Asai, was intrigued to find traces of germanium in coal, in living plants, and in many natural food products. But the richest sources of all, says the pamphlet, were healing substances such as Ginseng, Shitake mushrooms, aloevera, comfrey, garlic, and shelf fungus - the last-named said to have been valued for centuries by the Russians as a treatment for cancer. Where have I heard those words before? Oh yes, I almost forgot, and I quote: "not surprisingly, analysis of the healing waters at Lourdes, France, also revealed a high germanium content". (What, no miracles?) Admittedly, all this is outside my area of expertise but I find the inferences and the logic distinctly tenuous. I wonder how many other elements might prove to be common to those same sources, if one really went looking for them. As it is, Dr Asai is said to have climaxed ten years of research with the development of a safe, nontoxic compound which he called Ge-132 (biscarboxyethyl germanium sesquioxide). With a name as long as that, it ought to be able to kill or cure just about anything! Nor was the good doctor troubled either by doubts or modesty. According to the pamphlet: "Dr Asai hailed Ge-132 as a miracle cure for everything from headaches to life threatening conditions". Lest the reader still entertain any lingering reservations, the pamphlet seeks to reinforce the therapeutic claims by associating them with germanium the "powerful semiconductor", which provide ed the basis of the first transistor in 1948. This on the basis of "germanium's electron transfer properties as an agent of human health" . The way I see it Here I'm on more familiar ground and I fail completely to see any logical connection between the two disciplines. As mentioned in recent articles, nickel, cadmium and mercury are all very useful in electronics for promoting and supporting the movement (transfer?) of electrons but that doesn't imply potential curative properties; on the contrary, they've all been nominated as potential health hazards. Even as a semiconductor, germanium is only one of many such materials and none of them is particularly adept at "transferring" electrons. Copper does it ever so much better, with its inherently low resistance to current. (Oops - I nearly said current flow)! In Australia alone, there must be countless millions of kilometres of copper wire, "transferring" electrons endlessly hither and yon. Then again, if a semiconductor is necessary for whatever it is supposed to do as an "agent in human health", why not an organic compound of silicon, which has proved to be far more useful electronically than germanium? But no, the pamphlet is adamant: " Teamed with oxygen, germanium hones our natural defences, So if you're feeling really crook, don't sit around hopefully nibbling OC44 transistors. Take the advice of the TV pill adverts & "see your doctor" 64 SILICON CHIP helping the body protect itself. Through its specialised electron transfer ability, germanium works with oxygen to maximise cell energy. And when the work is done, the unique structure of organic germanium enables it to help oxygen clear out the debris: spent electrons". Debris? Spent electrons? What on earth are spent electrons? The mind boggles. I've been involved in electronics for sixty odd years and never as much as heard of them. What's more, when I mentioned the term to some technical friends, they just guffawed. If I'm not careful, one of them will end up trying to convince me that spent electrons are the ones left behind in low-emission TV picture tubes: worn-out, tired, listless electrons that can't quite make the distance to the phosphor screen! I. H. 's pamphlet, I'm afraid, presents much the same sort of credulity barrier that faced Hugo Gernsback back in 1924/25. So if you're feeling really crook, don't sit around hopefully nibbling OC44s (a once popular Germanium transistor). Take the advice of the TV pill adverts and "see your doctor"! Mains supply radiation To change the subject, the same letter in the September issue (T. A., Parramatta, p.22} made passing reference to "alleged radiation" from 50Hz power wiring and from such things as domestic electric blankets. I tended not to take his remarks too seriously, on the grounds that no ill effects have been positively identified in the home, while arguably hazardous industrial and medical situations are subject, these days, to fairly close supervision. It was with interest, therefore, that I came across a paper on the general subject in the latest issue of the IREE/IE Aust. Proceedings. I quote the full title for those who may be able to gain access to it and, as well, to the many references listed by the author: Journal of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Australia; Volume 8, Number 3, September 1988: "Power Lines and the Environment - The Electrical Impact" by K. J. Callaghan. The author is a senior engineer with the Queensland Electricity Commission, responsible for power line projects in the southern sector of that state. By way of preamble, he makes some interesting points, at least one of which may have puzzled readers of the September article. (1). Discussion of this general subject involves both magnetic and electric fields but because they exist simultaneously, they are normally grouped for convenience under the one heading; hence electromagnetic interference (EMI), . electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), &c. (2). Because overhead power lines and street wiring are so visible and unavoidable, they tend to attract the more attention from environmentalists. In fact, higher magnetic fields are common in homes, and in industrial and medical situations. Train at home NOW for money making CAREERS IN ELECTRONICS · · · OMd .r~cure ~ /u(:u,re. -,,_ NOW, AT HOME IN SPARE TIME, you can acquire the necessary skills in Electronics to help you secure a guaranteed future. You need no previous qualifications and there is no need to change your daily routine . Study when and where you choose. The course is compiled by experts and skilled tutors are ready to guide and assist you. THE FUTURE IS ELECTRONICS. Take a look around you. 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Applied to power lines and equipment, the term "radiation" has connotations of an implicit hazard by association with nuclear and high-power RF energy. In fact, 50Hz energy has a wavelength of around 6000km, and any "radiation" detectable within several hundred metres of the source is a near-field phenomenon and should be regarded as such. The author quantifies the magnetic and electric fields at ground level under typical high voltage transmission lines, pointing out that they tend to cancel down with proper design and phase balance. They are normally small compared with the Earth's static field and the electric fields present in thunderstorm conditions. In private homes, the 50Hz magnetic field can be greater than under power lines, especially near certain appliances and neutral/ earth links. A high, though not necessarily hazardous, electric field exists close to some electric blankets, according with our advice in the September issue to avoid leaving them switched on for long periods while you sleep. Nature, man-made and us On the subject of "Field Effects on Natural Ecosystems", Callaghan acknowledges some critical reports but suggests that they are mostly flawed. Serviceman's Log - SILICON CHIP It has been claimed, for example, that the growth rate of certain species of trees adjacent to high voltage lines is accelerated but this could be the result of opening up the easement area. Equally, a conflicting observation that the growth rate is sometimes retarded could be due simply to residual corona damage to the tips of the foliage. Bird migratory patterns do not appear to be affected by the field. Small animals are partially shielded from the electric field by the ground cover; for large animals, the changed forage conditions appear to be more significant than field effects. The performance of honeybees appears to be diminished somewhat by high electric fields but this can be mitigated by shielding the actual hive. And so on. His conclusion: "There is currently no scientific evidence of any environmental effect of 50Hz electric and magnetic fields on nature, above the negligible level". In the area of interference with man-made systems, the power line engineer has an admitted responsibility to minimise arcing and corona effects, which could affect communications systems. As well, due attention must be paid to possible magnetic and electric induction, earth current loops, &c. The latter section of the paper deals extensively with "Field Ef- ctd from page 59 So far, so good. At this point it appeared that with only a few components likely to be involved, a check of each component in turn might be the best approach. Remembering the faulty resistors in the CX-1480, I began by checking the resistors. R710 (along with diode 709) was disconnected first, then R709, R705 and 706. All checked OK. The next suspects were the electrolytic capacitors. I lifted C713 (100µ.F) and it checked OK. Then I lifted and measured C711 which connects to pin 4 of IC701. Supposedly 3.3µ.F, it measured only 66 . about 0.1µ.F. Eureka! Yes, that was it. A new 3.3µ.F capacitor was fitted and at first switch-on, the set came good immediately. And it continued to do so for a large number of switch-on cycles. I considered the point proved. In fact, I can now reveal that that particular capacitor is not even shown on the explanatory circuit mentioned earlier. Dare to hope So, one down, one to go. Dare I hope? Naturally I went straight to that capacitor. I unsoldered one pigtail from the board and as I fects on Biological Systems" and it is clear from the references that the author has taken due account of available literature. While a great deal of research has been undertaken since the 1960s, the findings again tend to be inconclusive. This despite the fact that, after 3-4 generations of exposure to power line fields, possible acute effects should have become selfevident. No long-term effects have ever been confirmed and no mechanism has been suggested whereby such long-term exposure could induce problems . Callaghan's overall summary: "Currently, the overwhelming opinion of the world's scientific/ medical fraternity is that long-term exposure to power line fields has not been shown to constitute a biological hazard to man". All this may be reassuring but is it the final word on the subject? Can we rest assured that she really will be right mate? I don't think so. If I'm conservative about miracle cures - Kira Voxes, shocking coils, organic germanium, &c - I feel much the same way about the environment. Even with the best of intentions our understanding of the environment is never quite unbiased or complete. The way I see it, in the pursuit of scientific achievement and technological progress, it's not a bad philosophy to always err on the side of caution. ~ lifted that end, the capacitor came clean away; the other pigtail was corroded where it entered the body and had obviously been making intermittent contact for some time. A new capacitor restored the set to normal operation, all in a matter of minutes. You don't get many breaks like that; Murphy will have a heart attack if he finds out. But as I commented earlier, the two faults were the same only different; the same capacitor but faulty for different reasons. The first capacitor had simply died of old age - a common fault with low value types - while the second one might well have retained its capacitance but suffered a broken lead. ~