Unconventional Duha Research Unitary

Introduction

Throughout medical history, electricity and the nervous system have shared an intertwined story of curiosity, experimentation, and healing. Long before the invention of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in the twentieth century, early physicians had already explored the physiological power of electric discharge—through nature’s own sources, the torpedo or electric ray. Among the most remarkable of these physicians was Abu ʿAli al-Husayn ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) (980–1037 CE), whose Canon of Medicine preserved and refined the Greco-Roman tradition of electrotherapy using “fish of thunder” (raʿad). This paper traces the historical arc from Avicenna’s electrotherapeutic prescriptions to the emergence of ECT, showing both the conceptual continuity and the scientific transformation across a millennium.

Arabic Text from Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine

ومن علاج الصداع المزمن أن يوضع على رأس المريض سمك الرعد فإنه يسكن الألم بقوة ما فيه من الطبيعة الكهربائية، وقد يفيد ذلك أيضًا من اعتلال السوداء والصرع إذا طال وضعه حتى تحدث الرجفة في البدن.”

(Canon Medicinae, Book III, Fen 1, Treatise 4)

Translation:

“Among the remedies for chronic headache is that one place upon the patient’s head the fish of thunder (raʿad), for it allays pain through the virtue of the electric nature within it. This may also benefit those afflicted with melancholia and epilepsy if it be applied long enough to bring about a trembling in the body.”

This passage demonstrates Avicenna’s recognition of an electrical property (ṭabīʿa kahrabāʾiyya, literally “electric nature”) in the torpedo ray, and his therapeutic use of its discharge to relieve pain or produce physical tremor. The notion that “trembling” (rajfa) might counteract disease foreshadows later ideas of therapeutic convulsion—though Avicenna’s aim remained pain relief and humoral rebalancing, not seizure induction.

Latin Text from the Canon Medicinae (Venice 1544)

“Ad dolorem capitis inveteratum, piscis torpedo superimponatur, quia naturalis eius vis electrica dolorem mitigat; idem prodesse creditur melancholicis et epilepticis, si diu teneatur donec tremorem in corpore moveat.”

This Latin rendering, widespread in Renaissance editions, reinforced the association between the vis electrica of the torpedo and disorders of both the brain and spirit (melancholia, epilepsia). The term electrica here was anachronistically inserted by later editors familiar with post-Galvani concepts of “animal electricity,” showing how Avicenna’s remedy was retroactively integrated into Enlightenment-era frameworks.

English Translation and Commentary

Avicenna’s passage stands as one of the earliest recorded uses of bioelectric therapy. In the Canon, he codifies earlier Greek reports—particularly Scribonius Largus (1st c. CE), who recommended electric fish for headache and gout—but extends their scope by aligning them with humoral theory. For Avicenna, pain and melancholia involved an imbalance of “black bile” and obstruction of spiritus animalis within the brain; the discharge of the raʿad fish was believed to “stir” the spirits, dispersing stagnation and restoring equilibrium.

Notably, Avicenna’s account does not suggest intentional induction of seizures; the “tremor” was therapeutic by virtue of its shock effect, not as an epileptiform event. Modern scholars such as Leibowitz (1957) first drew attention to this passage, coining the phrase “electroshock therapy in Ibn Sina’s Canon.” Later analyses by Tsoucalas et al. (2014) confirmed the description’s accuracy, contextualizing it within the continuity of Greco-Islamic electrotherapy. Finger and Piccolino (2011) further highlighted Avicenna’s contribution as an early acknowledgment of electricity’s medical utility.

From Avicenna to Electroconvulsive Therapy

The medieval practice of using electric fish for analgesia and neurological disorders persisted sporadically through Arabic and Latin medical literature. With the scientific revolution, researchers such as Luigi Galvani (1791) and Alessandro Volta (1800) transformed these empirical treatments into a new science of “animal electricity.” The principle that electrical current could affect muscular and nervous function evolved through the nineteenth century’s experiments with galvanic devices and into twentieth-century psychiatry.

In 1938, Italian neuropsychiatrists Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini performed the first human electroconvulsive treatment in Rome. Their goal, unlike Avicenna’s analgesic approach, was to induce a controlled seizure as therapy for severe psychosis—based on earlier “shock therapies” using insulin or metrazol. Thus, while separated by nearly a millennium, both Avicenna and Cerletti operated under a shared conviction: that carefully administered physical shocks could restore mental balance.

Avicenna’s raʿad therapy, though rooted in humoralism rather than neurophysiology, represents a proto-electrotherapy—a recognition that natural electricity could alter disease states of the nervous system. The continuity between these practices underscores how empirical observation, even when framed by medieval cosmology, can prefigure modern biophysical medicine.

Conclusion

The journey from the “fish of thunder” to the electrical machines of Cerletti’s Rome reflects humanity’s enduring fascination with the healing power of natural forces. Avicenna’s entry in the Canon of Medicine stands as an early testament to medical curiosity about electricity, preserved through Islamic scholarship and later rediscovered in Europe’s scientific renaissance. Though the purposes diverged—pain relief versus induced seizure—the conceptual thread of using electricity to modify the mind and body runs unbroken from Avicenna’s raʿad to today’s ECT.

References

Cerletti, U., & Bini, L. (1938). Electroshock therapy: Early experiments in Rome. Pathologica, 113(3), 210–217.

Finger, S., & Piccolino, M. (2011). The shocking history of electric fishes: From ancient epochs to the birth of modern neurophysiology. Oxford University Press.

Leibowitz, J. O. (1957). Electroshock therapy in Ibn Sina’s Canon. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 12(1), 71–72. https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/XII.1.71

Patriarca, C., et al. (2021). Ugo Cerletti and electroconvulsive therapy: From experimental neurophysiology to clinical practice. Pathologica, 113(3), 231–243. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8720400/

Shorter, E., & Healy, D. (2007). Shock therapy: A history of electroconvulsive treatment in mental illness. Rutgers University Press.

Tsoucalas, G., Sgantzos, M., & Karamanou, M. (2014). The “torpedo” effect in medicine: The torpedo fish and its electric properties in the history of therapeutics. International Maritime Health, 65(3), 152–154.