The Romans of the first century AD knew that electricity could affect the body: one court physician recommended touching electric eels to ease the pain of gout and headaches. But it was 1802 before the vital role that electricity plays in biology was put beyond doubt, shortly after Alessandro Volta created the first electric battery. Physicist Giovanni Aldini connected the severed head of an ox to a battery and watched it twitch, shiver and appear to come back to life.



Writers and artists were inspired to imagine how electrical shocks might cure various maladies. Most famously, Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein has its eponymous experimenter use such a method to animate a creature built of dead flesh. This image shows Kenneth Branagh in the title role of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), with Robert De Niro under the sheet.



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Electricity had seized the attention of the public even before it offered the promise of resurrection. As this page from a 1786 book shows, several contraptions for "medical electricity" had already been devised.



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In 1890, sufferers of "Nervousness, Debility, Sleeplessness, Rheumatism, Sciatica, Lumbago, Torpid Liver, Organic Weakness, and Kindred Ailments" were in luck: The Electropathic and Zander Institute, which hawked electricity-based therapies on Oxford Street, London, offered a so-called Electropathic Belt to give "new life and vigor" to weak men and delicate women. In reality, the belt produced no sensation whatsoever. A few lawsuits ensured that the company disbanded in 1894.



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Despite a few sham treatments being peddled, electricity was still considered a promising avenue for medical research. This 1901 print shows Francisque Crotte, founder of a medical institute in Lyon, France, attempting to treat tuberculosis with an electrical remedy.



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Around the turn of the 20th century, galvanic baths – which involved passing electrical current through the bath water – were thought to soothe rheumatism. That may sound dangerous, but the current was too low to electrocute the bather. In 1905, Dr Schnee's Four-Cell Bath conveniently allowed people to have a therapeutic soak while keeping their clothes on.



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By the 1950s, opinion had turned and mainstream medicine considered only a few bioelectrical treatments to be legitimate. Electroconvulsive therapy, shown in this picture, was one of them. This controversial treatment, in which a strong current is passed through the brain to trigger a seizure, is still used in a milder and better controlled form. It is effective at treating a variety of conditions, notably cases of depression where drugs and psychological therapy have not been successful.



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Electrotherapy has been slowly re-emerging into accepted medicine. For example, transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) is a widely accepted alternative to pharmaceutical pain treatment. Pads are stuck to the skin at the site of the pain and a small electrical current is passed through them It is used in British delivery rooms to help women manage the pain of childbirth.



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