Every Man his own Electric Physician : T . Gale and the History of Do-It-Yourself Neurology

We review the promotion of electrical treatments by laypeople for neurological and other conditions in a largely rural period of United States history. DOI : 10.14302/issn.2470-5020.jnrt-15-910 Corresponding author: Matthew B. Jensen, MD, MS 1685 Highland Ave #7273 Madison, WI 53705, Phone: 608-263-5448,


Self-treatment:
In early American, the public had long practiced medicine with home remedies and medical manuals.
Before the medical field was professionalized, healing was commonly a family or community activity. 1,2 People relied on self-care for many reasons, including money, convenience, personal beliefs, and the distance and difficulty of reaching the nearest doctor, which was often a serious consideration on the American frontier. 3

Electricity as Medicine:
The idea of using electricity, generated by torpedo fish, to treat neurological and other medical disorders dates back to the Roman Empire, though it was not until the 1770s that the numbness and cramping induced by the fish were understood to be caused by electricity. 5 By the late 18 th century, advances in the understanding of electricity, combined with technological advances in electrical devices, made electrotherapy a real possibility. One of the new theories to gain a widespread following was that of "animal electricity," a term coined by Luigi Galvani to mean the electricity inherent in the nervous system of all animals, including humans, that was the "animating force" of life.
Galvani's theory came from his observations of movement in the legs of dead frogs using electrostatic charges, which he reported in 1791 ( Figure 1). 6 Pioneering electrical devices, such as the first electric generator, a rotating sulfur globe created by Otto von Guericke in 1663, the Leyden jar in 1746, and the Voltaic pile, created in 1800, stoked the public's enthusiasm for electricity and led to repeated efforts to find a medical application for these machines. 5,6 . For many people, though, electricity was more entertainment than healer. Colonial American audiences paid five shillings each to see Ebenezer Kinnersley, an associate of Benjamin Franklin, electrify humans, who could then attract objects, throw sparks, and form a living circuit by joining hands. 6 Electricity's invisible but powerful force was a crowd pleaser.
The first person to suggest that electricity might have a place in medicine was German professor Johann Gottlob Kruger in 1743. He further suggested, based on his knowledge of how electricity could contract tight muscles, that it might work best with palsied limbs. 7 His  fire" of the same kind that emanated from the sun, animating the whole universe. 8  Using electricity properly was one of Gale's primary concerns. Gale regretted that electricity had been used therapeutically before its nature and effects were better understood, despairing that these early attempts, which often failed, had clouded "the glory of this inestimable medicine." 8 Electrical treatments had been too strong, in Gale's view, and thus often caused a relapse. 8 The answer, he felt, was the use of lighter shocks and more patience, especially with palsies, which might take as much as six months of treatment to cure.  The do-it-yourself approach that Gale promoted was especially attractive in an early American republic with a strong anticentralist and anti-elitist bias. The intersection of a nascent medical system, a variety of local independent healing traditions, and a paucity of restrictions on who might practice medicine fostered a flourishing marketplace for both traditional and unorthodox medical therapies in the early United States.
The late 18 th and early 19 th centuries were also a time when medical practices and theories found themselves in flux, and the number of "nervous" disorders was perceived to be on the rise. 6 T. Gale offered himself as the nation's advance agent for electric medicine,