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TIME Magazine, November 7, 1949, p. 70:
MEDICINE: Nobelmen
As far back as 1936 surgeons were working out a way to treat psychosis by an operation called a prefrontal lobotomy--the last resort for schizophrenics and manic-depressives. Using a technique developed by the University of Lisbon's emeritus professor Dr. Antonio Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz, skilled neurosurgeons cut away important nerve connections in the prefrontal brain lobe (a seat of reasoning) and the thalamus in the rear of the brain (a way station for emotional responses)...
Working in a similar field was a 68-year-old Swiss psychologist, Dr. Walter Rudolph Hess, director of Zurich University's Physiological Institute. A specialist in the circulatory and nervous systems, Dr. Hess studied the reaction of animals to electric shocks. By applying electrodes to parts of a cat's brain he was able to make the animal do what it would normally do if it saw a dog, i.e., hiss, etc. By experiments, Dr. Hess was able to determine how parts of the brain control organs of the body.
Last week the Council of the Caroline Institue at the University of Stockholm awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology jointly to Drs. Hess and Moniz...
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TIME Magazine, October 15, 1956, p. 74-75:
Electrical engineer Curtiss R. Schafer, who designs and develops electronic instruments for the Norden-Ketay Corp... believes [electronics] could save a lot of work for indoctrinators and thought controllers of the future...
"Elementary forms of biocontrol have already been demonstrated... Direct current of the required waveform and intensity passed through a man's head... changes his sense of balance, and he leans to one side... Other experimenters have shown that rats and dogs may be made to feel hungry just after eating, or afraid when they have nothing to fear, simply by injecting the appropriate neural currents into the central nervous system of the animal.
"The ultimate achievement of biocontrol," says Engineer Schafer, "may be the control of man himself... Biocontrol could make this enslavement complete and final, for the controlled subjects would never be permitted to think as individuals. A few months after birth, a surgeon would equip each child with a socket mounted under the scalp and electrodes reaching selected areas of brain tissue. A year or two later, a miniature radio receiver and antenna would be plugged into the socket. From that time on, the child's sensory perceptions and muscular activity could be either modified or completely controlled by bioelectric signals radiated from state-controlled transmitters...
"The once-human being, thus controlled, would be the cheapest of machines to create and operate."
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TIME Magazine, July 26, 1963, p. 40:
Getting Under Your Skin
In General Electric's Space Sciences Laboratory at Valley Forge, Pa., they are wiring rats to radios that draw all their electrical power from the bodies of the rodents themselves.
The faint electrical currents generated by living tissues, says G.E. Biologist John J. Konikoff, are nothing new. They have been used for many years in instruments, such as electrocardiographs, to show the condition of the body, but the currents were too weak to consider as serious power sources. Now transistors and other miniature electronic devices, which use only infinitesimal amounts of current, have changed all that.
Working in Konikoff's laboratory, L. [Luther] W. Reynolds implants corrosion-resistant electrodes in his rats, one of them just under the belly skin, the other in the abdominal cavity. Thin insulated wires lead out of the skin, and through them flows a current strong enough (155 microwatts) to run a miniature 500-kilocycle transmitter. The transmitter used at present is too big to put completely inside a rat, but the engineers believe that if it were reduced in size and tucked under the rat's skin, its body-powered signal would be easily heard several hundred yards away. The electrodes do not seem to bother the rat much. They have been tolerated for six months, one-sixth of a rat's normal lifetime, with no ill effects.
Using rabbits and dogs, Konikoff plans to put the whole works, electrodes and transmitter, inside the skin and leave the package there for long periods, the transmitter broadcasting all the time. The ultimate purpose is to develop body-powered devices for use inside humans. One possibility is the "pacemaker", which gives electrical timing to ailing hearts. Existing pacemakers tucked into human bodies get their electricity from small batteries that must be periodically by a surgical operation. This should not be necessary, says Konikoff. The body's own electricity can keep a pacemaker running indefinitely.
Another possibility is an internal telemetering system to report vital information such as heart beat, blood pressure, brain waves, etc. A man with such a device healed inside his skin would need to trail no wires. His physical condition could be checked from a distance without his knowing that a doctor was listening to his insides.
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Neuroscience News
On September 23, 2002 Cox News Service published an article stating that Professor Liwei Lin of the University of California, Berkeley, Sensor and Actuator Center has developed in-body fuel cell fueled by glucose and Saccharomyces cerevisiae (baker's yeast) that can generate 300 microvolts.
Obviously, if any similar device were connected to electrodes controlling metabolic activity, much larger quantities of electricity could be continuously generated to operate an Electrical Stimulation of the Brain biocontrol system and a transceiver implant (don't do this, Johnny, just hear it).
Revolutionary Devices to Control Your Brain, a March 8, 1963 article from Life Magazine by Robert Coughlan on Electrical Stimulation of the Brain
Mechanising the Mind: Brave New World of ESB excerpt from As Man becomes Machine, The Evolution of the Cyborg by David Rorvik, 1973.
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