The Argosy, Volume XLIV — page 305: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

IN THE INTEREST OF SCIENCE. 301 church, loved the same girl, and did many other things in common. “Their love for the same girl was rather peculiar, as it did not seem to make amy difference in their friendship. Most folks wondered at that, but they didn’t know that Jim, with all his fat, had the ‘econ’ and did not expect to live and raise a large and numerous family. Bull, knowing the state of af- fairs, thought it no more than right that Jim should enjoy himself with the young woman of his choice, for, as he said, Jim did not have long to live, and when he left this mundane sphere he would be a long time away from it. “Well, things went along rather so-so for many months, and, although Jim coughed a little, he did not seem to lose any flesh, nor very much sleep. Also, he seemed to be prime favorite with Miss Dee, which was the young lady’s name. “This rather worried Bill; not that he wanted his friend and partner to take the long trip, but he thought that if Jim were going to hang on indefi- nitely they ought to make some amicable arrangement with regard to Miss Dee. One night Bill spoke to Jim about it, and they talked the matter to a finish. ‘“‘ Jim said that he had been treating ‘himself with electricity for several months, and believed he had killed the germs which had been feeding on his sore lung. He had read in a quack book somewhere that germs could not exist along with electricity, and that if a patient could stand a current strong enough to kill the germs he would soon rid himself of all harmful bunches of bacteria. “He started in with small doses of the stuff; went into the dynamo room, hitched a reduction coil to a feeder wire, coupled on a switch, and then had it arranged so that by taking hold of the end of two wires he could turn the switch with his foot and give him- self a dose running anywhere from ten volts to the limit of the feeder, which was about two thousand or two thou- sand five hundred volts, I believe. “At that time he was using about one hundred and fifty volts, which he thought had chased the bugs all out of his system. “This was very interesting, and Bull said he thought he would prepare a scientific paper on the case and send it to some medical journal. Jim had no objection; in fact, thought that in the interest of science his case should be given to the world. “ But Bill said that before he did any writing on the subject he would conduct a few experiments of his own, s0 as to be sure that his doctrine was sound. The girl subject was not brought up at all, because Bill saw that it would cause hard feelings, and he did not want to lose the friendship of his pal. * But right down deep in his heart Bill was very sore over the way things turned out. He wanted that girl, and he wanted her badly. He said to himself that if Jim had been a decent kind of a feller he would have gone along and died, or, failing in that, would not have hung on to life and the girl too. “He kept these reflections to him- self, though, and did a lot of thinking about Jim’s consumption cure. ‘“ He started his paper on the subject, and, after the opening paragraph, treated electricity from a therapeutic standpoint. In order to give a full and free discussion of the subject, he was obliged to know just how a current varying in strength would act on a per- son; whether it operated with greater force in the morning or at night, how it was affected by cold and heat, by water, and by various other agents. “Then, too, he wanted to know how it would operate on people of varying temperaments; on the sick and the well, on the fat and the lean, etc., ete. “For the fat and the lean proposition he had himself and Jim for the purpose of experiments, and he worked in sev- eral other fellers around the shop to give him an idea of temperaments. But one thing he could not discover, and that was how many volts it took to kill a man. “ He read all the books he could find on the subject, but they gave him no hight. The statement would be made that such and such a man died from contact with a live wire carrying two thousand volts, and that another one died from one thousand volts. © But he could not find out just how ECOMMIC OO CO