Electrotherapy is a set of medical and physiotherapeutic techniques that uses electricity to treat injuries and diseases. Its applications include muscle rehabilitation, treatment of chronic pain, depression, and certain brain injuries.
It is only recently that humans have understood the nature of electricity and know how to manipulate it, so electrotherapy is considered a scientific breakthrough in the modern world.
However, the ancient Greeks and Romans had experiences with electricity and even proposed it as a solution to ailments and diseases.
Did they have devices to generate electricity and manipulate it? No, but they had natural and accessible sources of electricity: fish.
Electric fish in Egypt, Greece and Rome
The ability of some fish species to generate electricity is called bioelectrogenesis. These animals use electricity for a variety of purposes, such as communication, hunting, defense, navigation and characterization of the environment.
Some electrogenic species are located in places where important civilizations developed, such as the torpedo rays inhabiting the Mediterranean (order Torpediniformes) or the electric catfishes of Africa (family Malapteruridae).
We know that Egyptians, Greeks and Romans were familiar with electric catfishes because they are depicted in bas-reliefs on Egyptian monuments, Greek pottery and Roman mosaics.
They stun like a chat with Socrates, according to Plato.
Contact with these fish usually produces numbness in the limb with which it is touched. Perhaps this is why in the Hippocratic treatise “On Diet in Acute Diseases” an indeterminate species of fish, most likely an electrogenic fish, is mentioned with the term Narke, the root of the word narcosis.
This is considered the first written reference to these animals. Despite the mention of the extraordinary characteristic of Narke fish, the Corpus Hippocraticum does not include any medical treatment based on the application of their electricity.
Plato (427 – 347 BC) also spoke of the consequences of touching these animals in his dialogue with Menon, comparing the resulting sensation to the mental daze derived from conversing with Socrates.
Drawing of Socrates
Plato discussed the consequences of touching these animals, comparing the resulting sensation to the mental daze derived from conversing with Socrates.
Aristotle (384 – 322 B.C.) noted the cunning of torpedo rays in the way they stalk and hunt their food. As he reported in his research on animals, these fish hide on the seabed and paralyze approaching prey.
His disciple Theophrastus (371 – 287 B.C.) noticed that the discharges of torpedo rays could also be transmitted at a distance through some media, such as water or metallic fishing gear. Thus, he made one of the earliest descriptions of electrically conductive materials.
To deal with the inhibition of the amorous impulse
Many other classical authors spoke in similar terms about the extraordinary powers of these fish, such as Cicero (106 – 43 B.C.) or the poet Oppian of Anazarba, who aptly described in the 2nd century the body organs of torpedo rays where electricity is generated.
In his “Natural History”, Pliny the Elder (23 – 79) compiled some therapies based on the ingestion or topical application of certain parts of the electrogenic fish for different purposes, such as the stimulation of childbirth or the inhibition of the amorous impulse.
However, and despite what was known, no one proposed a medical application based on the electricity of these animals until the year 46.
Stingray cramps for pain relief
A physician who worked for the Emperor Claudius, Scribonius Longus, first proposed in 46 AD to use torpedo ray cramps to alleviate chronic pain that was difficult to treat. Only one of his works has come down to us, a pharmacopoeia entitled De Compositione Medicamentorum Liber, the first known text that talks about electrotherapy.
This work contains the story of Anteros, a freedman of the emperor Tiberius who suffered from gout and severe pain in one leg. During a walk on the beach, he accidentally stepped on a torpedo ray that numbed his leg and eliminated his pain. It is possible that this experience inspired Scribonius to recommend treating gout by placing a live torpedo ray in contact with the affected limb until the pain subsided through numbness.
In a similar way he suggested to relieve headaches, although in these cases it was necessary to put torpedo stripes on the head of the patients.
The work of Scribonius had a certain diffusion. The physician Dioscorides (50 – 90) endorsed these treatments and recommended them to treat rectal prolapse. Galen (129 – 201/216) performed some experiments with torpedo rays to test their benefits. At first he did not obtain positive results, which may have been due to the use of dead animals instead of live ones.
Thanks to someone coming up with the ingenious idea of applying electricity in a controlled manner to relieve excruciating pain and treat illnesses, thousands of people over the centuries have seen their quality of life substantially improve.
Alberto Romero Blanco, Predoctoral Researcher. Biological invasions and ecotoxicology. Ecology, Biodiversity and Global Change Program, University of Alcalá, Spain.
TYT Newsroom
