The curious way the Greeks and Romans used electricity to relieve pain without knowing how to generate it – 05/29/2023 – Science

Electrotherapy is a set of medical and physiotherapeutic techniques that use electricity to treat a variety of injuries and illnesses. Among its applications are muscle rehabilitation, the treatment of chronic pain, depression and certain brain injuries.

The human being understands the nature of electricity and learned to manipulate it a short time ago, so that electrotherapy is considered a scientific advance in the modern world.

But the ancient Greeks and Romans experimented with electricity and even proposed it as a solution to illness and disease.

Did they have devices to generate and manipulate electricity? No, but they had a natural and accessible source of electricity: fish.

The Electric Fish of Egypt, Greece and Rome

The ability of some species of fish to generate electricity is called bioelectrogenesis.

These animals use electricity for various purposes, such as communication, hunting, defence, navigation and the characterization of their surroundings.

Some electrogenic species live in places where important civilizations developed, such as the electric stingrays that inhabit the Mediterranean Sea (of the order Torpediniformes) or African electric catfish (from the family Malapteruridae).

We know that the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans were familiar with electric fish, which are depicted in bas-reliefs on Egyptian monuments, Greek pottery and Roman mosaics.

They stun like a conversation with Socrates, according to Plato

Contact with these fish often causes numbness in the limb used to touch them.

Perhaps for this reason, Hippocrates’ treatise on Diet in Acute Illness mentions an undetermined species of fish, most likely an electrogenic fish, with the ending narkewhich is the root of the word narcosis.

This is considered the first written reference to these animals. But, despite the mention of the extraordinary characteristic of fish narkeO Corpus Hippocraticum it does not include any medical treatment based on the application of your electricity.

Plato (427-347 BC) also commented on the consequences of touching these animals in his dialogue. Menocomparing the resulting sensation with the mental stunnedness derived from conversations with Socrates.

Aristotle (384-322 BC) highlighted the cunning of electric stingrays when it comes to stalking and hunting their food. As he reported in From the History of Animals, these fish hide at the bottom of the sea and paralyze approaching prey.

His disciple Theophrastus (371-287 BC) warned that discharges from electric stingrays could also be transmitted at a distance by some means, such as water or metallic fishing equipment. He produced one of the first descriptions of electrically conductive materials.

To treat love impulse inhibition

Many other classical authors spoke in similar terms about the extraordinary powers of these fish, such as Cicero (106-43 BC) and the poet Opian of Anazarbo, who aptly described, in the 2nd century AD, the body organs of electric stingrays that generate energy. electricity.

In Natural History, Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) compiled therapies based on the ingestion or topical application of certain parts of electrogenic fish for different purposes, such as the stimulation of childbirth or the inhibition of the amorous impulse.

But despite all this knowledge, no one proposed medical applications based on the electricity of these animals until the year 46 AD.

Stingray shocks to combat pain

The physician Scribonius Largo worked in the service of the court of the Roman Emperor Claudius. He was the first to propose, in 1946, the use of electric ray shocks to reduce chronic pain that was difficult to treat.

Only one of his works has come down to us—a pharmacopoeia entitled De compositione medicarum liber. This is the first known text that talks about electrotherapy.

The work includes the account of Antero, enslaved and freed by Emperor Tiberius. He suffered from gout and had severe pain in one of his legs.

During a walk on the beach, Antero accidentally stepped on an electric stingray, which numbed his leg and eliminated the pain.

It is possible that this experience inspired Scribonius to recommend treating gout by placing a live electric stingray in contact with the affected limb until the pain subsided thanks to the numbness.

He suggested relieving headaches in a similar way — but in this case, you had to place the electric stingrays over the patients’ heads.

Scribonius’ work had some repercussions. The physician Dioscorides (AD 50-90) endorsed these treatments and recommended them to treat rectal prolapse. And Galeno (129-201/216) carried out experiments with electric stingrays to prove their benefits. But initially he didn’t get positive results, perhaps because he used dead animals instead of live ones.

Thanks to someone who had the genius idea of ​​applying electricity in a controlled way to relieve unbearable pain and treat illnesses, the quality of life for thousands of people has significantly improved over the centuries.

*Alberto Romero Blanco is a predoctoral researcher in biological invasions and ecotoxicology at the Ecology, Biodiversity and Global Change Program at the University of Alcalá, Spain.

This text was originally published here.