M I N D


Clarke-style electromagnetic machine


…[electrotherapy is] another instance of those chimerical fancies of the day, which are perpetually disgracing our profession, and bringing


it into contempt with the public;


that, like mesmerism, it will meet with a similar fate…


William Beven


in the London Medical Gazette, 1842


Clarke-style electromagnetic machine Wood and metal W H Burnap, 1854–60 RRa0116 / A116662 Science Museum / L0076060 Wellcome Images


Sparked by the advent in 1754 of the Leyden jar – a device that stored and released electrical charges on demand – electrotherapy became an accepted medical technique. From the end of the nineteenth century until World War I, it was the preferred treat- ment for many mental illnesses. The instructions accompanying this electromagnetic machine suggest its use for hysteria, a condition that has been variously attributed to both physical and mental causes.


Primitive cures


In his 1747 book Primitive Remedies, the founder of the Methodist Church, John Wesley (1703–91), listed almost 300 medical conditions that could be prevented or healed by electricity. Some of his recommended treatments included administering up to a hundred shocks.


Electric conversation


Responses to the uses of electricity on the human body have ranged from horror to humour. Published in 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein paints a dark and terrifying picture of a monstrous creature brought to life by electricity only to cause chaos and misery. In 1845, Edgar Allen Poe published his satirically comic short story, Some Words with a Mummy, in which a group of educated men reanimate an Egyptian mummy with electricity and converse with him on the superiority of their modern culture – only to realise that, in fact, their knowledge hardly surpasses the ancient Egyptians’ at all, save for the invention of the cough drop.


‘Mysteria’


Despite his renown as a specialist in ‘the female condition’, Philadelphia neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell (1829–1914) was so confounded by the trances, fits, choking and hair-tearing of his hysterical patients that he sometimes called the condition ‘Mysteria’. His ‘rest cure’ involved isolating the patient from their friends and family for six to eight weeks, enforced bed rest and a high-fat diet.


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