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ABSTRACT
Benjamin Franklin had at least two accidents that resulted in electricity passing through his brain. In addition, he witnessed a patient's similar accident and performed an experiment that showed how humans could endure shocks to the head without serious ill effects, other than amnesia. Jan Ingenhousz, Franklin's Dutchborn medical correspondent better known for his discovery of photosynthesis, also had a serious accident that sent electricity though his head and, in a letter to Franklin, he described how he felt unusually elated the next day. During the 1780s, Franklin and Ingenhousz encouraged leading French and English electrical "operators" to try shocking the heads of melancholic and other deranged patients in their wards. Although they did not state that they were responding to Ingenhousz's and Franklin's suggestions, Birch, Aldini, and Gale soon did precisely what Ingenhousz and Franklin had suggested. These practitioners did not appear to induce convulsions in their mentally ill patients, but they still reported notable successes.
JANUARY 17, 2006, MARKS the 300th anniversary of Benjamin Franklin's birth (Figure 1; for biographies, see Brands 2002; Isaacson 2003; Van Doren 1938). Among his many achievements, Franklin is often cited for his scientific acumen, particularly for his research and insights on the nature of electricity (Cohen 1941). What is not as well known is that Franklin also conducted experiments to determine whether electricity could cure palsies, blindness, and hysteria (see Finger 2006). Even less well recognized is that Franklin and Jan Ingenhousz, an enlightened Dutch physician who championed smallpox inoculations and conducted pioneering experiments in photosynthesis, suggested applying electricity directly to the head as a cure for melancholia (for more on Ingenhousz, see Conley and Brewer-Anderson 1997; Reed 1947-48).
In this article, we shall trace the history of Ingenhousz s idea that cranial electricity might help "mad" patients. We shall then examine some of the case reports that appeared soon after Ingenhousz and Franklin requested clinical trials.
ADVENT OF THERAPEUTIC ELECTRICITY
The use of devices that could produce electricity by friction is usually traced to Otto von Guericke of Magdeburg, who constructed a rotating sulfur globe to study the Earth's gravitation (Hackmann 1978). In 1672, Guericke reported that his rotating sphere, when rubbed, might attract or repel small objects. In the opening decades of the...