We Are Electric: Inside The 200-Year Hunt For Our Body'S Bioelectric Code, And What The Future Holds

Science journalist Sally Adee breaks open the field of bioelectricity--the electric currents that run through our bodies--its misunderstood history of quackery, charlatanism, and yes, shortages of frogs, and why new discoveries will lead to improved antibiotics, cleared arteries, and new ways to combat cancer. Bioelectricity is the electricity that runs through every living thing. It is the reason our brain can send signals to the rest of our body, but also how we develop in the womb, and why our body knows to heal itself. It might also be the next scientific frontier: if we can crack the bioelectric code, much like we did with the genetic code, the implications for our intelligence and health are significant. Yet the field is still emerging from two centuries of skepticism and entanglement with medical quackery--all stemming from an 18th-century scientific war about the nature of electricity between Luigi Galvani (father of bioelectricity, famous for shocking frogs) and Alessandro Volta (inventor of the battery). In We Are Electric, award-winning science writer Sally Adee takes readers through the thrilling history of bioelectricity and into the future: from the medical charlatans claiming to use electricity to cure everything from infertility to cancer, to the advances helped along by the axons of giant squids, and finally to the brain implants and electric drugs that await us--and the moral implications therein.

• | Author: Sally Adee
• | Publisher: Hachette Books
• | Publication Date: Feb 28, 2023
• | Number of Pages: 352 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover
• | ISBN-10: 0306826623
• | ISBN-13: 9780306826627