Nexus - 0304 - New Times Magazine-pages

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WHY THE ELECTRIC BATTERY messy and more readily available method side the battery devices found lin Seleucia. WAS FORGOTTEN of analgesic. He suggests th_at these n~edles Over 50 years ago, Wilhelm Konig, the Of course, the 1.5 volts that would have then Director of the Baghdad Museum, been generated by such a device would not reported the discovery of an electric battery do much to deaden a patch of skin, so lthe 2,000 years old. next conclusion was that these ancient peo You had not heard about this sensational ple must have discovered how to linN up discovery? We can tell you why. It did not several batteries in series to produce a fit in with the established viewpoint. Most higher voltage. archaeologists did not want to know about Paul Keyser wrote that, "Mesopotamian it and hoped it would go away. medical practice included a number of ele But Konig's electric battery did not go ments conducive to the reception of an away. In fact, a lot more of them were electrotherapeut1ic devi.ce of this sort". In found in Parthian settlements near Sumeria, Akkad and Babylon there were Baghdad. two types of physicians, the "Asu" and the The battery Konig discovered consisted "Asipu". The latter practised diagnosis of of a pottery jar 14 cm high and 8 cm in Ithe patient's symptoms, or divination to diameter with a 3.3-cm opening at the top. determine the nature of the affliction. The Inside this opcning, and held in place with former prescribed the medicine or practised asphalt, was a tube made of a copper sheet incantation to provide healing. They lI1ay 10 cm long and 2.6 cm in diameter. The Ihave been the ones to apply electric shocks tube was sealed at the bottom with a copper Ito the patient's stricken parts. disc held in place with more asphalt. Keyser considers it significant that Suspended from the asphalt lid was an iron bronze and iron needles were found along rod 7.5 cm long which hung down inside the centre of the copper roIL The use of asphalt sealing indicated that the contraption must have contained some liquid. At that time, all available liquids apart from vegetable and mineral oils were acidic; so the logical conclusion was that tne pottery jar and its contents were for the production of an electric current. Vinegar was the most likely acid that would have been used. But it was the purpose to Which !!his electric currenI CQuld or would be put that produced some embarrassment. About Ithe only likely solution to this question was that it was used for electro plating, but no electroplated! items hadl ever been found, and, in any case, there is a lot more to electroplating than the production of a mild electric current. Now, Paul T. Keyser of the University of Alberta in Canada has come up with an alternative suggestion. Writing in the pres tigious archaeological Journal of Near Eastern Studies, he claims that these batter ies were used as analgesics. He points out that there is evidence that electric eels were I!Ised to numb an area of pain or to anaes !!hetise it fOF medical treatment. The elec tric battery c0uld have provided a less JUNE-JULY 1996 may have been used for acupuncture, and points out thar acupuncture was already standard practice in China. Electric fish were used for medicinal purposes in Greek and Roman times for reheving headache or gout. Scribonius Largus wrote long ago: "For any sort of foot gout, wben tbe pain COmes on it is good to put a living black torpedo f,ish under his feet while standing on Ithe beach; not dry, but one on which the sea washes until he feels that his whole foot and ankle are nUmb up to the knees." But while electric fish are found in the Mediterranean Sea and in the Nile River, they are not found in the Persian Gulf or the rivers of Mesopotamia, hence the need to invent an electric battery. But all that was just much for the '100 establishmenL It did nol fit iII with the usual concept of the development of Homo sapiens, Ihe 'brilliant generation of modern Iron Rod Asphalt Stopper ---_ Unknown Electrolyte Copper Cylinder NEXUS· 43