Smita Sen

High Voltage: On The Heart, Defibrillation, and Competing Philosophies of Medicine

What does it mean to defibrillate someone? What happens when we try to revive a heart that stops beating? In 2019, I watched doctors defibrillate my father. They pumped his chest with electricity to bring his heart back to a steady rhythm. The moment stayed with me, not only for its brute force, but also for its surreal, scientific audacity and spiritual impossibility. With defibrillation, it seemed as though medicine was attempting to reach into the seam between life and death. In this preliminary essay, I examine the nature of the heart as a life-giving organ, as an energy center in South Asian religions, and as the site of end-of-life electrical resuscitation — the last line between worlds. My investigation deals with two different histories of cardiac medicine and brings together a variety of archival material, academic literature, religious texts, and medical training documents. The article is broken into four main sections, moving from narrative medicine and personal reflection to historical analysis and critical inquiry. First is the Introduction, a reflection written after witnessing my father’s defibrillation. Power follows, offering a history of defibrillation in contemporary Western medicine. Third is Unstruck Sound, a comparative analysis of the Western and South Asian histories of cardiology and the perceived relationship between the heart and the soul. Last, but not least, is Thresholds, a meditation on critical questions that unravel our understanding of defibrillation, the Anahata chakra, and the heart itself. To illustrate concepts in this essay, I have included archival images and some of my original drawings. This essay, the first in a series, offers more questions than it does answers. In the spirit of apophatic studies, High Voltage steps into the loaded and complex landscape of end-of-life care, piecing together disparate histories and lived realities. This essay is a labor of love, navigating the abstract and unknowable as I try to make sense of what happened to my father’s heart when it was pumped with electricity.