Electric Sounds 189
as magnetic) poles or that magnets (as well as electric currents) could decompose water,
not to speak of his investigations of occult practices such as metal witching and sword
swinging.
In his letter on acoustic vibrations, Ø rsted mentions that the “ celebrated Ritter ... had
long ago discovered that Volta ’ s electric pile [battery] is capable of producing sound when
the ear receives a shock from it. ”^12 Ø rsted ’ s surprising statement is far paler than the reality
of Ritter ’ s experiments, which applied electric currents (some quite large) to his own body,
including his eyes, ears, “ organs of evacuation, ” “ organs of reproduction, ” and “ other
choice parts of the body. ” Though Ritter probably went further in self-experimentation
than anyone else, in 1795 Alexander von Humboldt (who enlisted Ritter ’ s collaboration)
devised a galvanic circuit that connected some frogs via open wounds he had caused on
his own back.^13 Their horrifying fascination aside, Ritter ’ s detailed accounts describe his
self-experimentation as brave explorations of a terrain of experience he dared not inflict
on anyone else, yet considered important to reveal the dimensions and implications of
unified nature, including human beings. Though one wonders about his exact relation to
these transgressive experiments and their possibilities for superlative pain and pleasure,
Ritter explicitly used these electrical stimulations to probe the exact relation between the
different (yet presumably unified) modes of sensation.
For instance, in one series of experiments in 1803, Ritter stimulated various organs with
the positive pole of a voltaic column, resulting “ in the eye: increased influence of light,
bluish color, diminution of objects, narrower than usual field of vision; in the ear: sound
with a deeper tone than g; in the nose: suppression of scent as with acide muriatique
oxyg é n é ; on the tongue: acidic taste; and finally in all of these, as in every other part of
the body, expansion. ” In contrast, application of the negative pole yielded “ in the eye:
diminished influence of light, reddish color, and wider than usual field of vision; in the
ear: sound with a higher tone than ḡ [presumably an octave higher]; in the nose: impulse
to sneeze; on the tongue: alkaline taste; and finally the general feeling [ Empfindung ] in
all of these, as in every other part of the body: contraction. ”^14 The symmetry of these
extremes in fact shows the larger rationale for Ritter ’ s expectation of “ chemical rays ” lying
beyond the violet. Beyond his general expectations from Naturphilosophie about the polar-
ity of expansion and contraction throughout the sensorium, Ritter ’ s findings reveal high
and low pitches (as well as blue and red colors, acid and alkaline tastes) as expressions of
electrical activity. As he notes, with some wonder, “ the same thing that produces colors
in the eye, produces tones in the ear, — as though colors were mute tones , and tones, in
turn, speaking colors. — That may well seem to be only a manner of speaking, but it could
be more than one may have allowed oneself to believe. ”^15
Writing to Pictet, Ø rsted interprets Ritter ’ s findings to mean “ that in each sound there
are as many alternatives of positive and negative electricity as there are oscillations, but
the union of the two electricities produces a shock. ... The perceptible effect of the union
of all these imperceptible shocks is sound. ”^16 Because of their overriding commitment to