Electrotherapy -Fascinating!

Ancient Iranian Science & Technology
The Purpose of the Parthian Galvanic Cells:
A First-Century A. D. Electric Battery Used for Analgesia

http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Science/parthian_galvanic_cells.htm


.....
The suggestion of a medical purpose for this device is not based on a deduction since we lack the evidence, but on an induction, as any attempt to determine the purpose of any archaeological artifact in the absence of clear parallels and literary attestation must be. Such an induction or intuition must remain hypothetical until further confirming evidence is forthcoming. Any such suggestion must take into account the complete context (archaeological, cultural, and technological) of the device and must also account for its electrical parameters.[40]

Parthia, though having its own sources of cultural strength, was surely a buffer state between the Romans and the Indian and Chinese realms.[41] The Roman trade with Parthia passed through Dura-Europus and Palmyra[42] and from there to Seleucia along the Silk Road.[43] Influence passed from Rome to China and back[44] making Seleucia an entrepot for East-West trade in ideas as well as goods.[45] From A.D. 43 the city shows a greater predominance of Oriental influence.[46] Medical influence passed from Rome to China with the drug trade: storax = suho, frankincense = hs0lu, henna = chia-chia, theriaca = tiyehka.[47] That the devices are found in Seleucia and merely 40 km north suggests that their use and purpose might be sought in the marriage of Chinese and Roman ideas on fertile Mesopotamian soil.

Mesopotamian medical practice included a number of elements conducive to the reception of an electrotherapeutic device of this sort. In Akkadian and Babylonian medicine, following the normative Sumerian practice, two "colleges" of physicians were recognized-the asū and the āšipu.[48] The asū was responsible for prescriptions and incantations, which were formulaic and traditional (the wording is unchanged over a millennium),[49] and he was considered a craftsman or technician and was associated with magicians;[50] the devices were found in magical contexts. The āšipu, on the other hand, practiced divination and diagnosis from the patient's symptoms, but not therapy, and gained status over the asū in Late Babylonian times.[51] The Mesopotamian therapy was typically non-invasive,[52] using drugs in preference to surgery: one common drug component was vinegar.[53] Little is known of Parthian medicine, but it likely included most of the traditional elements of Mesopotamian medicine;[54] the Chaldean tradition continued under the Greeks,[55] and the Parthians typically tolerated local rulers and customs.[56]

Little is known of Chinese medicine during the Han period, which is nearly coterminous with the Parthian era,[57] but acupuncture was already a standard practice since at least the Chou Dynasty (i.e., before the Han). Acupuncture is described in the Huang Ti Nei Ching (the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine), variously dated, but no later than the first century A.D.[58] This may explain the fact that bronze and iron "needles" are found with the Seleucian devices.

The critical stimulus was, I believe, provided by the Greco-Roman use of electric fish as an analgesic. In the mid-first century A.D. (ca. A.D. 47-48), Scribonius Largus[59] first records the practice of applying the torpedo ocellata[60] as an analgesic for headache (Compositiones 11) and gout (Compositiones 162). The recipe for gout indicates the method:

Ad utramlibet podagram torpedinem nigram uiuam, cum accesserit dolor, subicere pedibus oportet tantibus in litore non sicco, sed quod alluit mare, donec sentiat torpere pedem totum et tibiam usque ad genua. hoc et in presenti tollit dolorem et in futurum remediat.

For any sort of podagria (foot-gout): when the pain comes on, it is good for one to put a living black torpedo-fish under his feet while standing on a beach (not dry but one on which the sea washes), until he feels that his whole foot and shank are numb just up to the knees. This will both relieve the current pain and alleviate future recurrences.

The numbing effect had long been known.[61] The ability of the electric ray to transmit its discharge was reported by Heron and Pliny in the late first century A.D.[62] Heron even singles out as conductors iron and bronze, just the materials used in the cell and the needles. The transmission of the discharge was probably known earlier.[63]

Electric fish of one species or another are found in the Mediterranean and in the Nile but not in the Persian Gulf or the Tigris-Euphrates system. Is it possible that some Parthian asū began applying the long-known galvanic tingling produced by dissimilar metals in an electrolyte, perhaps with conductive acupuncture needles of bronze and iron, as a substitute for the Greco-Roman ichthyoelectroanalgesia?

Modern medical practice provides an instructive parallel[64] First it must be noted that the current produced in the cell models (ca. 1 milliamp [mA]) is readily detectible on the skin or tongue and especially in cuts or punctures.[65] Since the publication of R. Melzack and P. D. Wall's "Gate Theory of Pain" twenty-five years ago[66] electrically induced analgesia (and anaesthesia) has been subjected to an increasing number of successful clinical tests.[67]

The electrical parameters vary but for (partial) local analgesia are a current of roughly a few milliamps at a voltage of a few volts (and both direct current and alternating current up to 700 Hz are used): such analgesia might well have been produced by a device such as the Parthian cell. Three other effects have been investigated with clinical success in modern times as well: (1) trauma healing and antisepsis,[68] involving currents of 0.2 to 1.0 mA, voltages of 0.8 to 1.4 V, direct current; (2) bone regeneration,[69] involving currents of 0.001 to 1.0 mA, voltages of about 1 V, and direct current (or alternating current up to 1Hz; though the approach is sometimes contraindicated due to concern about induced osteogenic sarcomas);[70] and (3) the still-controversial induced remission of malignant tumors.[71] The Parthian cells may not have been used for any particular one of these purposes: the bone regeneration and tumor regression results cited above involve implanted electrodes-unlikely in first century A.D. Babylon. That the cells generate currents and voltages shown in modern times to be of positive clinical effect tends to confirm the possibility that they could have had a medical purpose in Parthia.[72]

.....