Here is some hands on experience, very similar to your capacitor experiment that you described...
True, but there aren't any really good terms to describe pulse discharges in an understandable common language way. Take the power potential of a handful of flashlight batteries. Not much to be impressed with, and most people would be more than willing to have them connected to their body (maybe not teeth though) without worry. take those same batteries, step the voltage up to about 100,000 + and charge a pulse discharge capacitor till the batteries are exhausted. Apply the same overall power of the batteries to your body in this manner and you will have a very different end result than with just the batteries hooked up directly. (an interesting demo of this is to construct the capacitor arrangement and discharge it into a hot dog, with one terminal connected to each end. But only if you are very, very familiar with working with high voltages and capacitors. Hands on experience, not book learning experience)
About 45 years ago in high school, our physics teacher did not show up for class...and no substitute did either. I connected a single D cell ( 1.5 volt flashlight battery) to a simple 3 volt filament transformer and had the thirty students form a human chain by holding hands up and down the rows.
I gave one student at one end of the chain, one lead from the transformer and another student at the other end of the chain, the other lead, and connected the battery. I said does anyone feel anything? NOoooooo.
Then I disconnected the battery!
The collapsing magnetic field, when I disconnected the battery, brought all 30 students out of their chairs and back down into them at the same exact time. We were on the second floor of a cement school building. Has anyone else seen or heard what happens when 30 X 100 lbs hits a cement floor in a school at once?
Has anyone else heard the sound of 30 teenagers screaming at the top of their lungs in a small classroom?
Don't try this at home or at school...
There are too many lawyer around now.
And too many laws as well. Gee ... I really miss the old days. wonder what kids do for harmless fun nowdays?