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.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.The adoption of the electric chair became mixed up in the "war of currents" between Thomas Edisons direct current system and industrialist George Westinghouses 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 Westinghouses 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". Etymology
In May 1889 the state of 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". It was not the only choice of word people were considering.
Medications such as NSAIDs and gabapentinoids may be prescribed to reduce swelling of the spinal cord, pain, and spasticity.Research is underway to consider the potential of stem cells for treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. There are, however, no approved stem cell therapies for myelomalacia. See also


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