Electrocution

{{Further|Electric chair}}

In the Netherlands, in 1746, Pieter van Musschenbroek's lab assistant, Andreas Cuneus, received an extreme shock while working with a leyden jar, the first recorded injury from human-made electricity.{{Cite web |title=THE LEYDEN JAR |url=https://www.awesomestories.com/pdf/make/144237 |website=awesomestories.com}}{{cite book |editor-first=Zongcheng |editor-last=Yang |title=Chinese Burn Surgery |publisher=Springer |date=2015 |isbn=978-94-017-8575-4 |pages=12 |doi=10.1007/978-94-017-8575-4 |url=https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-94-017-8575-4.pdf}}{{Cite web |title=Pieter van Musschenbroek |url=https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/pieter-van-musschenbroek/ |access-date=2025-05-28 |website=The Linda Hall Library |language=en-US}} By the mid-19th century high-voltage electrical systems came into use to power arc lighting for theatrical stage lighting and lighthouses leading to the first recorded accidental death in 1879 when a stage carpenter in Lyon, France, touched a 250-volt wire.{{cite book|last=Lee|first=R.C.|author2=Rudall, D.|title=Proceedings of the Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society |chapter=Injury mechanisms and therapeutic advances in the study of electrical shock |s2cid=37264673|year=1992|volume=7|pages=2825–7|doi=10.1109/IEMBS.1992.5761711|isbn=0-7803-0785-2}}{{Cite web |last=Laboratory |first=National High Magnetic Field |title=Leyden Jars – 1745 - Magnet Academy |url=https://nationalmaglab.org/magnet-academy/history-of-electricity-magnetism/museum/leyden-jars-1745/ |access-date=2025-05-28 |website=nationalmaglab.org |language=en}}

The spread of arc light–based street lighting systems (which at the time ran at a voltage above 3,000 volts) after 1880 led to many people dying from coming in contact with these high-voltage lines, a strange new phenomenon which seemed to kill instantaneously without leaving a mark on the victim.{{cite book |first=Randall E. |last=Stross |title=The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World |publisher=Crown/Archetype |date=2007 |isbn=978-0-307-39456-9 |pages=171–3 |oclc=669067041}}{{sfnp|Brandon|2009|pp=14–24}} This would lead to execution by electricity in the electric chair in the early 1890s as an official method of capital punishment in the U.S. state of New York, thought to be a more humane alternative to hanging. After an 1881 death in Buffalo, New York, caused by a high-voltage arc lighting system, Alfred P. Southwick sought to develop this phenomenon into a way to execute condemned criminals. Southwick, a dentist, based his device on the dental chair.{{sfnp|Brandon|2009|p=24}}

The next nine years saw a promotion by Southwick, the New York state Gerry commission (which included Southwick) recommending execution by electricity, a June 4, 1888 law making it the state form of execution on January 2, 1889, and a further state committee of doctors and lawyers to finalize the details of the method used.{{sfnp|Moran|2007|pp=102–104}}

The adoption of the electric chair became mixed up in the "war of currents" between Thomas Edison's direct current system and industrialist George Westinghouse's alternating current system in 1889 when noted anti-AC activist Harold P. Brown became a consultant to the committee. Brown pushed, with the assistance and sometimes collusion of Edison Electric and Westinghouse's chief AC rival, the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, for the successful adoption of alternating current to power the chair, an attempt to portray AC as a public menace and the "executioners' current".{{cite book |first=Mark |last=Essig |title=Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death |publisher=Bloomsbury |date=2009 |isbn=978-0-8027-1928-7 |pages=152–5 |oclc=955211891}}

File:William Kemmler.jpg]]

In May 1889, the state of New York sentenced its first criminal, a street merchant and convicted murderer named William Kemmler, to be executed in their new form of capital punishment. Tabloid newspapers, trying to describe this new form of electrical execution, started settling on "electrocution," a portmanteau word derived from "electro" and "execution".{{sfnp|Moran|2007|p=xxii}}

It was not the only choice of word people were considering. The New York Times editorial column noted words such as "Westinghoused" (after the Westinghouse Electric alternating current equipment that was to be used), "Gerrycide" (after Elbridge Thomas Gerry, who headed the New York death penalty commission that suggested adopting the electric chair), and "Browned" (after anti-AC activist Harold P. Brown).{{sfnp|Moran|2007|pp=xxi-xxii}} Thomas Edison preferred the words dynamort, ampermort and electromort.{{sfnp|Moran|2007|pp=xxi-xxii}} The New York Times hated the word electrocution, describing it as being pushed forward by "pretentious ignoramuses".{{sfnp|Moran|2007|p=xxii}}

{{Main|Electric shock}}

Electrocutions are relatively rare, causing about 1000 fatalities in the United States each year, around 400 of these deaths occur from high-voltage electric sources. Between 50 and 300 cases occur from lightning.{{Cite book |title=Spitz and Fisher's medicolegal investigation of death: guidelines for the application of pathology to crime investigation |date=2020 |publisher=Charles C. Thomas, Publisher, Ltd |isbn=978-0-398-09313-6 |editor-last=Spitz |editor-first=Werner U. |edition=5th |location=Springfield, Illinois |editor-last2=Diaz |editor-first2=Francisco J. |editor-last3=Fisher |editor-first3=Russell S.}}{{Cite web |title=Electric Shock or Injury: First Aid in an Unthinkable Emergency |url=https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/electric-shock-injury |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20250416223858/https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/electric-shock-injury |archive-date=2025-04-16 |access-date=2025-05-28 |website=Cleveland Clinic |language=en}} Fish & Geddes state: "Contact with 20 mA of low-frequency electrical current through the chest can be fatal".{{cite journal |pmc = 2763825|pmid = 19907637|year = 2009|last1 = Fish|first1 = R. M.|last2 = Geddes|first2 = L. A.|title = Conduction of electrical current to and through the human body: A review|journal = ePlasty|volume = 9|pages = e44}} The threshold electrical current RMS magnitude required to trigger cardiac arrest is well studied.{{cite journal |vauthors=Kroll MW, Luceri RM, Efimov IR, Calkins H |title=The electrophysiology of electrocution |journal=Heart Rhythm O2 |volume=4 |issue=7 |pages=457–462 |date=July 2023 |pmid=37520015 |pmc=10373159 |doi=10.1016/j.hroo.2023.06.004 }}International Electronics Commission, Report IEC/TR 60479-5, 2007 The mechanism of cardiac arrest is typically ventricular fibrillation as opposed to ventricular asystole.{{cite journal |vauthors=Lee RC, Zhang D, Hannig J |title=Biophysical injury mechanisms in electrical shock trauma |journal=Annu Rev Biomed Eng |volume=2 |issue= |pages=477–509 |date=2000 |pmid=11701521 |doi=10.1146/annurev.bioeng.2.1.477 }} Ventricular fibrillation prevents effective pumping of blood through the vascular system resulting in death, if not quickly reverted to a more effective cardiac rhythm.

Three elements are required for an electrocution to occur: (a) a charged electrical source, (b) a current pathway through the victim, (c) a ground. The health hazard of an electric current flowing through the body depends on the amount of current and the length of time for which it flows, not merely on the voltage. However, a high voltage is required to produce a high current through the body. This is due to the relatively high resistance of skin when dry, requiring a high voltage to pass through. The severity of a shock also depends on whether the path of the current includes a vital organ.

Death can occur from any shock that carries enough sustained current through a vital organ or tissue. When an electric current flows through the brain or spinal cord, death due to asphyxiation may occur as a result of interference with the central nervous system's control of respiration, or through direct paralysis of the chest muscles.{{Cite book |title=Spitz and Fisher's medicolegal investigation of death: guidelines for the application of pathology to crime investigation |date=2020 |publisher=Charles C. Thomas, Publisher, Ltd |isbn=978-0-398-09313-6 |editor-last=Spitz |editor-first=Werner U. |edition=5th |location=Springfield, Illinois |editor-last2=Diaz |editor-first2=Francisco J. |editor-last3=Fisher |editor-first3=Russell S.}}Low currents (70–700 mA) usually trigger fibrillation in the heart, which is reversible via defibrillator but is nearly always fatal without intervention. Currents as low as 30 mA AC or 300–500 mA DC applied to the body surface can cause fibrillation. Large currents (> 1 A) cause permanent damage via burns and cellular damage.

Electrocution is an uncommon form of suicide.{{cite book |last1=Lester |first1=David |title=Suicide as a Dramatic Performance |date=5 July 2017 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-351-48748-1 |pages=229–230 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sSwrDwAAQBAJ |access-date=17 August 2024 |language=en}}

In Nazi concentration camps, prisoners commonly committed suicide by throwing themselves at the wire electric fences, colloquially known as "going to the wire."{{cite book |last1=Rawson |first1=Andrew |title=Auschwitz: The Nazi Solution |date=30 April 2015 |publisher=Pen and Sword |isbn=978-1-4738-2798-1 |page=56 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hTagBwAAQBAJ&dq=%22going+to+the+wire%22+%22camp%22&pg=PA56 |access-date=17 August 2024 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Knopp |first1=Guido |title=Hitler's Holocaust |date=26 August 2011 |publisher=The History Press |isbn=978-0-7524-6937-9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RaATDQAAQBAJ&dq=%22going+to+the+wire%22+%22camp%22&pg=PT197 |access-date=17 August 2024 |language=en}}

{{Reflist}}

{{refbegin}}

• {{cite book|first=Craig|last=Brandon|title=The Electric Chair: An Unnatural American History|publisher=McFarland|year=2009|isbn=978-0-7864-4493-9 }}
• {{cite book |first=Richard |last=Moran |title=Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair |location=New York |publisher=Knopf Doubleday |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-37572-446-6}}

{{refend}}

• {{Wiktionary-inline|electrocution}}

{{Trauma |state=autocollapse}}

{{Authority control}}

Category:Causes of death

Category:Electricity

Category:Injuries

Category:1880s neologisms

es:Electrocución