Listening to the Body Electric - continued...

Part 2: Using Telephones in Electrophysiology

One of the fields in which scientific listening resurfaces in the 19th century is experimental physiology, in particular electrophysiology. While studying the activity of electricity in muscle-tissue and nerves, physiologists found themselves in a situation similar to that of the young Laënnec. Around 1850, they were clearly lacking methods for displaying their epistemic objects. Since electricity itself is neither visual nor audible, the situation was particularly difficult. Electricity entirely belongs to the sphere of the "real." One could even say it is a "negative real" since it seems to be out of reach for the human senses. Therefore, one of the major challenges of electrophysiology consisted in the proper design of experimental settings and the conception of display technologies (Lenoir 1986).

One of the common instruments used in this study was the frog galvanoscope, a vivisected and isolated frog leg displaying weak currents of electricity by twitching when current is passed through it. Since physiologists were often trained as physicians, most of them were familiar with the technique of medical auscultation. Not surprisingly, the stethoscope was soon adopted in electrophysiology to trace the movements of muscle contractions in various experiments. It is interesting to note, shortly after the first demonstration of the electric telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, physiologists began to integrate this novel device into their laboratory environments. According to Florian Dombois, this telephone-based research can be regarded to be the "first audifications" of electrical currents (Dombois 2008a, 42; see also 2008b).