Electricity is the body's own language, and medicine learned to speak it, from Galvani's frog legs to the first implanted pacemaker in Stockholm in 1958, the defibrillator, the cochlear implant and deep brain stimulation. Current is fast but indiscriminate, touching every cell and fiber near the electrode. The episode ends in February 2025 with the first approved brain stimulator that listens before it responds.
Who's who
- Luigi GalvaniBologna anatomist whose frog experiments suggested animal electricity
- Alessandro VoltaPhysicist who announced the voltaic pile in 1800
- Wilder PenfieldNeurosurgeon who mapped the human cortex by stimulation
- José DelgadoYale physiologist who stopped a charging bull by radio
- Arne LarssonSwedish engineer, first recipient of a fully implanted pacemaker
- Rune ElmqvistPhysician-engineer who built the 1958 pacemaker
- Åke SenningKarolinska surgeon who implanted the first pacemaker
- Alim-Louis BenabidGrenoble neurosurgeon who discovered deep brain stimulation for tremor
Where it happens
- Karolinska Hospital, Stockholm, SwedenSite of the first fully implanted pacemaker, 1958
- Bologna, ItalyWhere Galvani did his frog experiments
- Montreal Neurological Institute, CanadaPenfield's center for mapping the cortex
- Grenoble, France+1 more episodeWhere Benabid found high-frequency stimulation stops tremor
Timeline
- 1791Galvani publishes his commentary proposing animal electricity
- April 11, 1938First electroconvulsive treatment given in Rome
- October 8, 1958Larsson receives the first fully implanted pacemaker
- 1987Benabid discovers high-frequency thalamic stimulation stops tremor
- February 1980First human implantation of the automatic implantable defibrillator
- February 24, 2025FDA approves adaptive deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease
Still debated
How deep brain stimulation works is open; network modulation is favored. Depression trials were stopped for lack of benefit over sham, and some researchers say they tested the wrong patients or targets. Whether Delgado's bull was calmed or merely stopped by a motor effect is also disputed.