A Shocking Experience

My mother moved from 35 Northcote Ave which she paid $7500.00 for, in Parkdale to 13 Tyndall Ave, which she paid $18,000.00 for, a few blocks away, but a much nicer neighborhood.
This was about 1955, the house was much nicer, no cockroaches, and had been previously owned by a Doctor. When moving the doctor inadvertently, or other, left a piece of equipment, that was used to shock people. It is my understanding that a mild shock stimulates the healing of wounds. The machine was enclosed in a little open wooden box about 4 in deep 6 in high, and 8 in long and was operated by and held one of those old fashion dry cell batteries with 2 prongs on the top. There were 3 settings on the machine, mild, strong, and really strong, approaching, Old Sparky, referring to the electric chair still in use in Florida. The way it worked was, you held on to two tubes connected to the machine by a pair of wires one tube in each hand, and there was a small tube inside a coil which you would manually pull out, and the further out you pulled the tube the more intense the resulting shock. When you put the machine in the mild position, and pulled out the tube you could pull the tube all the way and a child would not be to discomforted, it was in the second position that you actually began to feel the effects, or in effect the beginning of the second stage was the end of the first stage, and so forth. At the end of the second stage, you could really take it but you knew for sure what was happening. The beginning of the third stage when the excitement started to happen. As I said we were all playing with the machine to see how much of a jolt we could take, and it got to John B. to try and he was doing not bad when Bob S. came by watched for a minute, and reached over to the machine and pulled the tube right out, the effect being that John B's body sort of all balled up his face contorted he fell on the floor writhing around, his body in spasms like you can't imagine, yelling and screaming. We had to quick get the tube from Bob S. and quick put it back in the machine to shut it down, and when John B finally picked himself up, he wanted to kill Bob S. everyone else had a good laugh, and Bob S. said that it couldn't be that bad, that John B was just putting on an act. Some time later when the excitement had worn off Bob S. said that he would like to try the machine, and John B. was in another room and no where in sight, so we hooked Bob up to the machine. He was doing OK when John B came from the other room, and pulled the tube right out, at which time Bob was thrown to the floor face contorting veins bulging, writhing kicking and screaming shut off the machine. John B rand away in order to keep Bob in pain but we had to get Bob off the machine. When Bob was finally disconnected from the machine, he said maybe it was a little worse than I thought. We all had a laugh, went back to work and got out another train.
I still have this unit somewhere and maybe if I find someone who collects medical antique machines I will get rid of it, but it sure relieved the tedium of another ho hum work day.

In retrospect is was probably not a good idea to play with this thing in the manner we did because, if someone would have had a week heart, we might just have killed them. Can you imagine arriving at the Pearly Gates and St. Peter saying, that the railroad yard is a dangerous place to be working, and asking were you killed by a run away rail car or passenger train out of Union Station, and having to reply, no I was killed by a dry cell battery, how embarrassing
Allan