MEDICO-LEGAL RELATIONS OF ELECTRICITY.
As the frequency of accidents caused by electricity is rapidly increasing, we have of late years been enabled to generalize in a manner never before possible in regard to their results, and although our present conclusions must be recognized as provisional and perhaps temporary—to be changed or modified in accordance with future knowledge—yet we have obtained a basis of fact on which we can securely rely. The general laws of injury and accident through electricity have been fairly well determined, although many of the details are not yet thoroughly worked out or understood. The advances of knowledge in this direction are so rapid that an article on this subject, if it deals too closely with details, is liable to become out of date almost before it has left the press. Like all large subjects when first made objects of general interest and investigation, and in regard to which we are on the threshold only of knowledge, the facts discoverable may lead us at any time in unexpected directions and open out new fields of thought and inquiry. We shall try to limit ourselves here, as far as possible, to proved facts, and leave questions doubtful or in dispute to be settled later; contenting ourselves merely with pointing them out and, perhaps, in some cases giving the facts on either side.
Electrical accidents and injuries may be divided into those which are caused by the atmospheric electricity—lightning proper, globes of fire, St. Elmo’s fire—and those produced through the agency of mechanical or artificial electricity—electrical machines, batteries, dynamos, etc. The effects caused by these different agents probably vary only in degree: the atmospheric electricity in the form of lightning, etc., being so much more powerful than the charges usually produced artificially as to cause some difference in the results.