Electrical apparatus used in medicine before 1900

Abstract

The Ancients had at their disposal torpedo fish, amber and magnets. It was not until the sixteenth century that ideas on the strange behaviour of amber and magnets were put forward. The eighteenth century saw the application of Newton's theories of matter and the introduction of the electrostatic machine, Galvanism and Volta's battery. In the nineteenth century there was extensive application of electricity in medical practice, with the development of electrocautery apparatus and illuminated cystoscopes, the pioneering of the electrocardiogram and the discovery of X-rays.