Background
D'Arsonval was born on June 8, 1851, in the Château de la Borie, in La Porcherie, Haute Vienne, France. The d’Arsonval family was part of France’s ancient nobility, having held land and wealth in Limoges for centuries.
Jacques Arsène d'Arsonval, 1851–1940, medical physicist.
Jacques-Arsène d'Arsonval Cosmetics and Skin Diathermy.
French physicist and physician, D’ Arsonval was a pioneer in electrotherapy.
Gramme dynamo modified by d'Arsonval to produce sinusoidal currents.
D'Arsonval's galvanometer with a magnet and a movable coil.
Commemorative Medal on the occasion of the Professor d'Arsonval's retirement on May 27, 1933.
Treatment of cancer by cytolisis with Oudin coil (left of patient). The induction coil and interrupter which powers the Oudin coil is behind patient's head.
Solenoid used by d'Arsonval for autoconduction.
Portrait of d'Arsonval.
D'Arsonval's apparatus used in the experiments on high frequencies. Dispositive view. Application for demonstrative uses.
Galvanometer Desprez and D'Arsonval. Gariel, Charles-Marie. Practical treatise of electricity T.1. Paris: O. Doin, 1884.
D'Arsonval`s Phone. Gariel, Charles-Marie. Practical treatise of electricity T.2. Paris: O. Doin, 1884.
Doctor Jacques Arsène d'Arsonval (1851-1940).
D'Arsonval studied at the Collège Sainte-Barbe in Paris, France.
Treatment by the condensation method.
D'Arsonval received the Grand Cross in 1931.
D'Arsonval received a baccalaureate degree from the Université de Poitiers (1869).
D'Arsonval studied medicine in the University of Limoges and obtained his medical degree in 1877.
biophysicist physician physicist scientist
D'Arsonval was born on June 8, 1851, in the Château de la Borie, in La Porcherie, Haute Vienne, France. The d’Arsonval family was part of France’s ancient nobility, having held land and wealth in Limoges for centuries.
D’Arsonval studied classics at the Lycée Impérial de Limoges and later at the Collège Sainte-Barbe. By the time he received a baccalaureate degree from the Université de Poitiers (1869), d’Arsonval had decided upon a career in medicine. He was the fourth generation to make this decision. His studies began at Limoges, but after the war of 1870, he continued them in Paris and obtained his medical degree in 1877.
After getting his medical degree in 1877, d’Arsonval had a chance to social encounter with Claude Bernard at the Salon de Lachard altered the course of the young physician’s career. Drawn to Bernard’s lectures, d’Arsonval on one occasion was able to correct the faulty wiring in Bernard’s equipment, permitting the completion of a classroom demonstration. Thereafter d’Arsonval became Bernard’s préparateur from 1873 to 1878.
After Bernard’s death, he assisted C. Brown-Séquard, eventually replacing him at the Collège de France. With Paul Bert’s assistance as Minister of Public Education, the Collège de France was able to establish a laboratory for biophysics at rue St.-Jacques in 1882. D’Arsonval directed the laboratory until 1910, when he moved to the new laboratory at Nogent-sur-Marne, erected with funds raised by public subscription. He directed this laboratory until his retirement in 1931.
Bernard’s influence led d’Arsonval formally to give up a medical career for a life of physiological research. His thesis (1876) was on pulmonary elasticity and circulation. The young scientist adopted Bernard’s organismic philosophy, adding little to it but a belief that electrical potential was one of the physicochemical characteristics of cells.
In 1882 d’Arsonval was awarded the Prix Montyon of the Académie des Sciences for his ingenious apparatus for studying these problems. His double-chambered calorimeter was remarkably accurate and based upon a new approach. He maintained a constant temperature within its inner chamber by circulating ice water through tubes surrounding the inner chamber. The temperature and quantity of water exchanged was a measure of the heat produced. The constant interior temperature increased the accuracy of gas volume measurements and insured more constant rates of breathing. He also devised thermoelectric needles which allowed Bernard to measure simultaneously the temperature of tissue and blood in adjacent vessels.
In 1894 d’Arsonval invented a simplified but less accurate calorimeter for hospital tests.
His early studies dealt with the electrical properties of muscle contraction. He recognized that Bell’s new invention, the telephone, provided a perfect device for detecting the current in muscle tissue. Telephones operate on extremely feeble currents similar to animal electricity. Galvanometers then in use drew too much current for sensitive tests. D’Arsonval used a frog muscle to join the mouthpiece of a phone and an induction coil with the receiving portion, which completed the circuit of a functional telephone. This interest in muscle current led to a series of practical inventions in the early 1880’s. They included nonpolarizable silver chloride electrodes for biological research, refinement of carbon-rod microphones, and the invention with Marey of myographic equipment. D’Arsonval, in cooperation with Deprez, invented the mobile circuit galvanometer in 1882.
Muscle contraction continued to interest him, especially Ranvier’s histological studies of striated muscle and L. Hermann’s discovery that a negative potential reading characterized the point of direct excitation of a muscle and was followed by a positive variation throughout the body of the muscle. D’Arsonval’s own research on contraction led to the same conclusions about the negative activation potential. Using his highly sensitive galvanometer, d’Arsonval found a feeble positive current during normal rest or tonus, which vanished during the act of direct excitation. Experiments showed that the electrical changes were surface phenomena of approximately the same strength as is needed to induce contraction in a muscle adjacent to an excited nerve or muscle. E. Du Bois-Reymond explained the negative action potential by assuming a basic bipolarity in muscles.
D’Arsonval found that high voltage shocks did not always lead to sudden or inevitable death. Artificial respiration could frequently revive victims of accidental electric shock. Gradually d’Arsonval’s interests shifted from pure biological research to technological problems. For example, as an aside to his calorimetric work, d’Arsonval designed the first electrically controlled constant temperature incubator for embryological and bacterial research. The d’Arsonval incubator was used well into the twentieth century.
In later years d’Arsonval became increasingly involved in the application of electricity to industry, a role which he clearly enjoyed and fostered.
He worked with Georges Claude on industrial methods for the liquefaction of gases (1902), was consulted on high energy electrical transmission equipment, served as government science consultant during World War I, and was a constant promoter of the automobile and airplane.
After H. Herz, a physicist, built the first high frequency oscillator, shortly thereafter d’Arsonval used it to experiment upon the effects of high frequency (500,000-1,500,000 c.p.s.), low voltage alternating current on animals. This led him in 1891 to report that no sensory or motor responses were evoked by high frequency currents. As Herz had noted earlier, the only effect was the production of heat. The heating effect could be applied to muscle aches, spasms, tetanus, tumors, arthritis, and circulatory and gynecological problems. D’Arsonval correlated the frequency with expected temperatures for a given period of time.
The first high frequency heat therapy unit was established under d’Arsonval’s direction at the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital in 1895. Indeed, electrotherapy was called d’Arsonvalization until the broader term diathermy came into use after 1920. The applications of high frequency treatment were highly successful. D’Arsonval helped to develop apparatus for electrocoagulation which was widely used for surgical excisions and tumor treatments. High energy procedures were favored because these wavelengths were antibacterial. By 1910 methods of physiotherapy utilizing high frequency waves, X rays, and radium had become a professional discipline.
He died on December 31, 1940 at the age of 89 in La Porcherie, France.
D’Arsonval believed life was vital but completely deterministic. The primary manifestation of life was the conversion of various forms of energy for work. As Bernard’s assistant, d’Arsonval’s first projects were on animal heat and body temperature.
D’Arsonval believed the contractile elements were Ranvier’s disks and that the surface production of electrical charge had a physical explanation. Lippmann had shown that a globule of mercury in acidified water produced a measurable current flow when mechanically deformed. D’Arsonval reversed the argument, stating that every current causes a physical deformation. He theorized that a positive stimulus should cause elongation and a negative variation should cause contraction; he built a model to test his concept. A thin rubber tube was filled with porous plugs impregnated with mercury surrounded by acidified water. When subjected to electrical charges the model acted exactly according to d’Arsonval’s predictions.5 Later studies of the electrical organs of the torpedo fish substantiated his suggestions, which were highly plausible in the absence of an alternate chemical theory.
D’Arsonval was an active member of societies for electrotherapy, physics, electronics, engineering, electro ceramics, and soldering, in addition to being a member of the Society of Biologists.
In 1871, 20 years old, d’ Arsonval married a young widow, mother of a 3 years old girl. His wife died in 1896. He was married again, but he didn’t have children from the both wifes.