View source for Electrocution

{{Short description|Death or injury by passage of electricity}}
{{Redirect|Electrocute|the band|Electrocute (band)}}
{{More citations needed|date=April 2011}}
[[File:Man in electric chair.jpg|thumb|Death by [[electric chair]]]]
'''Electrocution''' is [[death]] or severe injury <!-- Do not remove "severe injury" without first gaining consensus on the talk page. This definition is sourced. --> caused by [[Electrical injury|electric shock]] from electric current passing through the body. The word is derived from "electro" and "execution", but it is also used for accidental death.<ref>[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/electrocute "Electrocute" from the ''Merriam-Webster Dictionary of the English Language''], 2009</ref><ref name="oxford">{{Cite encyclopedia|title = electrocute|encyclopedia = Oxford Dictionaries|publisher = Oxford University Press|url = http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american_english/electrocute|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130109133509/http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american_english/electrocute|url-status = dead|archive-date = January 9, 2013|access-date = 2015-08-22}}</ref>

The term "electrocution" was coined in 1889 in the US just before the first use of the [[electric chair]] and originally referred to only electrical execution and not other electrical deaths. However, since no English word was available for non-judicial deaths due to electric shock, the word "electrocution" eventually took over as a description of all circumstances of electrical death from the new commercial electricity.

== Origins ==
{{Further|Electric chair}}

In the Netherlands in 1746 [[Pieter van Musschenbroek]]'s lab assistant, [[Andreas Cuneus]], received an extreme shock while working with a [[leyden jar]], the first recorded [[Electrical injury|injury from human-made electricity]].<ref>[https://www.awesomestories.com/pdf/make/144237 awesomestories.com, THE LEYDEN JAR]</ref><ref>Zongcheng Yang, Chinese Burn Surgery, Springer -, 2015, page 12</ref> By the mid-19th century high-voltage electrical systems came into use to power [[Arc lamp|arc lighting]] for theatrical stage lighting and lighthouses leading to the first recorded accidental death in 1879 when a stage carpenter in [[Lyon]], [[France]], touched a 250-volt wire.<ref>{{cite book|last=Lee|first=R.C.|author2=Rudall, D.|title=Proceedings of the Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society |chapter=Injury mechanisms and therapeutic advances in the study of electrical shock |s2cid=37264673|year=1992|volume=7|pages=2825–2827|doi=10.1109/IEMBS.1992.5761711|isbn=0-7803-0785-2}}</ref>

The spread of arc light–based street lighting systems (which at the time ran at a voltage above 3,000 volts) after 1880 led to many people dying from coming in contact with these high-voltage lines, a strange new phenomenon which seemed to kill instantaneously without leaving a mark on the victim.<ref>Randall E. Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World, Crown/Archetype - 2007, page 171-173</ref>{{sfnp|Brandon|2009|pp=14–24}} This would lead to execution by electricity in the [[electric chair]] in the early 1890s as an official method of [[capital punishment]] in the [[U.S. state]] of [[New York (state)|New York]], thought to be a more humane alternative to [[hanging]]. After an 1881 death in [[Buffalo, New York]], caused by a high-voltage arc lighting system, [[Alfred P. Southwick]] sought to develop this phenomenon into a way to execute condemned criminals. Southwick, a dentist, based his device on the dental chair.{{sfnp|Brandon|2009|p=24}}

The next nine years saw a promotion by Southwick, the New York state Gerry commission (which included Southwick) recommending execution by electricity, a June 4, 1888 law making it the state form of execution on January 2, 1889, and a further state committee of doctors and lawyers to finalize the details of the method used.{{sfnp|Moran|2007|pp=102–104}}

The adoption of the electric chair became mixed up in the "[[war of currents]]" between [[Thomas Edison]]'s [[direct current]] system and industrialist [[George Westinghouse]]'s [[alternating current]] system in 1889 when noted anti-AC activist [[Harold P. Brown]] became a consultant to the committee. Brown pushed, with the assistance and sometimes collusion of Edison Electric and Westinghouse's chief AC rival, the [[Thomson-Houston Electric Company]], for the successful adoption of alternating current to power the chair, an attempt to portray AC as a public menace and the "executioners' current".<ref>Mark Essig, Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death, Bloomsbury Publishing USA - 2009, pages 152-155</ref>

=== Etymology ===
[[File:William Kemmler.jpg|thumb|[[William Kemmler]]]]
In May 1889 the state of [[New York (state)|New York]] sentenced its first criminal, a street merchant named [[William Kemmler]], to be executed in their new form of capital punishment. Tabloid newspapers, trying to describe this new form of electrical execution, started settling on "electrocution," a [[portmanteau]] word derived from "electro" and "execution".{{sfnp|Moran|2007|p=xxii}} 

It was not the only choice of word people were considering. ''[[The New York Times]]'' editorial column noted words such as "''Westinghouse''d" (after the [[Westinghouse Electric Corporation|Westinghouse Electric]] [[alternating current]] equipment that was to be used), "''Gerry''cide" (after [[Elbridge Thomas Gerry]], who headed the New York death penalty commission that suggested adopting the electric chair), and "''Brown''ed" (after anti-AC activist [[Harold P. Brown]]).{{sfnp|Moran|2007|pp=xxi-xxii}} [[Thomas Edison]] preferred the words ''dynamort'', ''ampermort'' and ''electromort''.{{sfnp|Moran|2007|pp=xxi-xxii}} ''The New York Times'' hated the word electrocution, describing it as being pushed forward by "pretentious ignoramuses".{{sfnp|Moran|2007|p=xxii}}

== Medical aspects ==
{{Main|Electric shock}}
Fish & Geddes state: "Contact with 20 mA of current can be fatal".<ref name=FishGeddes2016>{{cite journal |pmc = 2763825|pmid = 19907637|year = 2009|last1 = Fish|first1 = R. M.|last2 = Geddes|first2 = L. A.|title = Conduction of electrical current to and through the human body: A review|journal = ePlasty|volume = 9|pages = e44}}</ref>

The health hazard of an electric current flowing through the body depends on the amount of [[electric current|current]] and the length of time for which it flows, not merely on the [[voltage]]. However, a high voltage is required to produce a high current through the body. This is due to the relatively high [[Electrical resistance and conductance|resistance]] of skin when dry, requiring a high voltage to pass through.<ref name=FishGeddes2016/> The severity of a shock also depends on whether the path of the current includes a vital organ.

Death can occur from any shock that carries enough sustained current to stop the heart. Low currents (70–700 mA) usually trigger [[fibrillation]] in the heart, which is reversible via [[Defibrillation|defibrillator]] but is nearly always fatal without help. Currents as low as 30 mA AC or 300–500 mA DC applied to the body surface can cause fibrillation. Large currents (> 1 A) cause permanent damage via [[burn]]s and cellular damage.

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

===Bibliography===
* {{cite book|first=Craig|last=Brandon|title=The Electric Chair: An Unnatural American History|publisher=McFarland|year=2009|isbn=978-0786444939}}
* {{cite book |first=Richard |last=Moran |title=Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair |location=New York |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-37572-446-6}}

==External links==
* {{Wiktionary-inline|electrocution}}

{{Trauma |state=autocollapse}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Causes of death]]
[[Category:Electricity]]
[[Category:Injuries]]
[[Category:1880s neologisms]]

[[es:Electrocución]]