Electrotherapy with torpedo fish
Electroterapia con pez torpedo
- Date
- c. 47 · confidence medium
- Place
- Rome, Lazio, Italy
- Credited to
- Scribonius Largus (physician at the court of Claudius)
- Field
- Matter & energy
What it is
In his Compositiones, Scribonius Largus advised pressing a live torpedo ray against the painful area to treat headaches and gout. It is the first documented medical use of an electric shock, although its nature was unknown.
Scribonius wrote around AD 47; Pliny and Dioscorides record similar uses. As an empirical practice there was no awareness that it was 'electricity'.
What it led to
- a tradition of treating pain with electric fish (Dioscorides, Galen, Andalusian physicians)
- experimental interest in the torpedo ray in the 18th century (Walsh, Galvani)
- modern electrotherapy