ABSTRACT

Between the first and last decades of the nineteenth century, electricity moved from the arena of the religious and universal, subtle fire and ether, to that of the secular and technological. Although still marvelous, as evidenced by its reception at the world’s fairs, electricity was, by the 1890s, also harnessed to the pedestrian and domestic worlds of street lighting and household labor (Nye, 1991). Electrotherapy followed suit, the humoral innovations of the early eighteenth century giving way to a clinical, systematized set of practices. After the end of the Civil War, although scholarly communication about electricity continued to cross the Atlantic, electrotherapeutics became independently established in the United States.The Nineteenth Century

Electrical innovation and experimentation in the nineteenth century flourished in the hands of male electricians, scholars, and physicians, who extended, during the first part of the century, the work of Galvani and Volta. In 1831, Michael Faraday combined the electrical and the magnetic into the electromagnetic coil, by which direct current was transferred into alternating or faradic current (Taylor, 1983: 281; Harman, 1982: 31). After alternating current was introduced, electricity could be transmitted for long distances, and was rapidly centralized throughout the nation. This centralization not only laid the foundation for electrified households, but also enabled the direct-sale of electrical appliances for medical purposes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Nye, 1991; Overmeier and Senior, 1992).The Electrotherapeutic Origins of Pushbutton Psychiatry

By the end of the century, there were several types of electricity and electrical device available to the medical practitioner. Static (or “frictional” or “franklinic”) electricity, while overshadowed by more sophisticated technology,

was used occasionally, alongside galvanism and faradism (Beveridge and Renvoize, 1988: 159). Shock treatment using the Leyden jar was less frequently used than during the eighteenth century (Rockwell, 1891: 161). These electricities were applied generally or locally, through the skin, by electrodes placed on the head, in a sinusoidal bath, by the hand, by a brush, or in bathwater-to name only a very few of the alternatives available (Beveridge and Renvoize, 1988: 159).