Weird Dangers Of Electrocution Illustrations
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This set of images is one of things that pops up out of Weird Wide Web from time to time. I posted them on the Weird Retro facebook page some 4 years ago. And knew little about them, as most posts I've seen of the strange illustrations, they claim to be from a German Handbook on electrocution, published in 1933. It didn't take much digging to find out the actual story behind these illustrated oddities. They're actually from a book called “Elektroschutz in 132 Bildern” (Electrical Protection in 132 Images) published in 1931 by Austrian-British physician Stefan Jellinek who lived in Vienna at the time. Through his work as a pathologist, and after seeing at first hand bodies coming in as the result of electrical accidents, he dedicated himself to the dark side of electrical engineering, by examining the effects of electricity on the human body.
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Jellinek as the first holder of the first chair in electropathology, an are of study that he invented. He started his investigation into electropathological studies in 1899, and by 1929 when he was given the chair, he was considered an expert in the strange field of electricity and the human body. He proposed the theory of electrical suspended animation, which proposed that electricity should continue to be used to reanimate a body until signs of postmortem lividity appear. He understood, at a time when the powers and dangers of electricity were just beginning to be realised, the dichotomy of electricity's power to both kill and bring back to life.
The proof of Jellinek's theory came about after an incident in August 1924. A 30-year-old woman was with her little daughter in Kaisersteinbruch, a small town on the Lower Austrian/Burgenland border, were struck by lightning. They were brought into the morgue, and declared dead by a visiting Viennese doctor, Dr. Warecha. He had heard of Jellinek's theory, and attempted resuscitation on the mother, and he had a local farmer try with the child. After an hour both victims were revived, literally brought back to life. The incident caused a tremendous sensation and made the Jellinek Method a widely known theory of resuscitation.
Jellinek also collected reports, artifacts and devices related to electrocution. By 1909 he had the collection housed in the General Hospital, as was known as the Electropathological Museum. The University of Vienna established as Department of electropathology, the first in the world. So in 1936 the museum was transferred to the University. However by 1938 Jellinek had lost his museum and his university position, due to the Nazi Nuremberg Race Laws, for being a Jew. He had to emigrate to Oxford, England in 1939. But managed to get his recollection returned to him after WWII. He remained in the UK, but visited Vienna as a guest lecturer and to continue the curating of the museum. He died in 1968, in Edinburgh, his collection eventually being handed over to Technical Museum in Vienna for posterity.
The proof of Jellinek's theory came about after an incident in August 1924. A 30-year-old woman was with her little daughter in Kaisersteinbruch, a small town on the Lower Austrian/Burgenland border, were struck by lightning. They were brought into the morgue, and declared dead by a visiting Viennese doctor, Dr. Warecha. He had heard of Jellinek's theory, and attempted resuscitation on the mother, and he had a local farmer try with the child. After an hour both victims were revived, literally brought back to life. The incident caused a tremendous sensation and made the Jellinek Method a widely known theory of resuscitation.
Jellinek also collected reports, artifacts and devices related to electrocution. By 1909 he had the collection housed in the General Hospital, as was known as the Electropathological Museum. The University of Vienna established as Department of electropathology, the first in the world. So in 1936 the museum was transferred to the University. However by 1938 Jellinek had lost his museum and his university position, due to the Nazi Nuremberg Race Laws, for being a Jew. He had to emigrate to Oxford, England in 1939. But managed to get his recollection returned to him after WWII. He remained in the UK, but visited Vienna as a guest lecturer and to continue the curating of the museum. He died in 1968, in Edinburgh, his collection eventually being handed over to Technical Museum in Vienna for posterity.
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