History
"Electrotherapy" has been in use for at least 2000 years, as shown by the clinical literature of the early Roman physician, Scribonius Largus, who wrote in the Compositiones Medicae of 46 AD that his patients should stand on a live black torpedo fish for the relief of a variety of medical conditions, including gout and headaches. Claudius Galen (131 - 201 AD) also recommended using the shocks from the electrical fish for medical therapies.
Low intensity electrical stimulation is believed to have originated in the studies of galvanic currents in humans and animals as conducted by Giovanni Aldini, Alessandro Volta and others in the 18th century. Aldini had experimented with galvanic head current as early as 1794 (upon himself) and reported the successful treatment of patients suffering from melancholia using direct low-intensity currents in 1804.
Modern research into low intensity electrical stimulation of the brain was begun by Leduc and Rouxeau in France (1902). In 1949, the Soviet Union expanded research of CES to include the treatment of anxiety as well as sleeping disorders.
In the 1960s and 1970s, it was common for physicians and researchers to place electrodes on the eyes, thinking that any other electrode site would not be able to penetrate the cranium. It was later found that placing electrodes on the earlobes was far more convenient, and quite effective.
CES was initially studied for insomnia and called electrosleep therapy; it is also known as Cranial-Electro Stimulation and Transcranial Electrotherapy.
In 1972, a specific form of CES was developed by Dr. Margaret Patterson, providing small pulses of electric current across the head to ameliorate the effects of acute and chronic withdrawal from addictive substances. She named her treatment "NeuroElectric Therapy (NET)".
Read more about this topic: Cranial Electrotherapy Stimulation
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