ABSTRACT
In 153 AD, the Roman physician Scribonius Largus identified that electric current had analgesic properties, instructing patients to stand on an electric ray for the treatment of gout. In 2014, transcranial magnetic stimulation was approved by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence for the treatment of migraine. Although separated by nearly two millennia, these milestones represent the evolution of the utilisation of electric current in medical and anaesthetic practice. Significant advances have been made over the last century in particular, and during the 1960s and 1970s, tens of thousands of patients were reportedly anaesthetised for surgical interventions using electric current as the anaesthetic agent. Many medical interventions, including transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation and deep brain stimulation, have evolved in the aftermath of investigations into electroanaesthesia; the potential for electric current to be an anaesthetic agent of the future still exists.
Subject(s)
Electronarcosis/history , Torpedo/physiology , Transcutaneous Electric Nerve Stimulation/history , Animals , Electroconvulsive Therapy/history , Electronarcosis/trends , History, 20th Century , History, Ancient , HumansABSTRACT
Pain has been a major medical problem from the beginning of recorded history. Since the earliest medical writings, there have been innumerable procedures designed to relieve pain and its suffering. In this study, we have reviewed both the early medical writings of various civilizations and the first modern publications, to compile a history of neurosurgical procedures for the relief of pain.
Subject(s)
Analgesia/history , Neurosurgery/history , Analgesia/methods , Electronarcosis/history , History, 17th Century , History, 18th Century , History, 19th Century , History, 20th Century , History, Ancient , HumansABSTRACT
The author presents his whole-life experience with biological treatment of mental disorders. He qualified 50 years ago in 1933 and has been psychiatrist for 50 years. During his practice extending over half a century he tested personally and clinical work all biological therapeutic procedures in psychiatry, starting with treatment by pharmacogenic sleep, all types of shock therapy, psychosurgery, modern psychiatric pharmacotherapy as well as possibilities of contemporary prevention of psychiatric diseases by thymoprophylaxis . In this chapter the author presents a chronological review of different types and forms of biological therapy in psychiatry and his own views on the therapeutic effectiveness on different methods of biologically oriented psychiatric therapy.
Subject(s)
Mental Disorders/therapy , Psychotherapy/history , Convulsive Therapy/history , Electronarcosis/history , Europe , History, 20th Century , Humans , Hyperthermia, Induced/history , Mental Disorders/history , Narcotherapy/history , Psychosurgery/history , Psychotherapy/methods , United StatesABSTRACT
A review of the search for a safe, effective, and inexpensive means of electrical anesthesia.
Subject(s)
Electronarcosis/history , History, 18th Century , History, 19th Century , History, 20th Century , Humans , USSR , United Kingdom , United StatesSubject(s)
Electronarcosis/history , History of Dentistry , History, 18th Century , History, 19th Century , HumansABSTRACT
This paper traces the history of the use of electricity to treat pain, beginning with the first century A.D. practice of using the torpedo fish to treat gout, continuing through the eighteenth-century use of electrostimulation as an analgesic, up to 1900 when electroanalgesia fell into disrepute. The author recognizes the early empiric nature of electrotherapy as it was catalogued by the Reverend John Wesley, and the beginnings of speculation on the mechanism of pain relief by Berlioz, Sarlandière, and others.
