Electrotherapeutic disputes: the 'Frankfurt Council' of 1891

Since the 1980s and 1990s, vagus nerve and deep brain stimulation, transcranial magnetic stimulation and cranial electrotherapy stimulation have found their way into neurology as therapeutic approaches to epilepsy, Morbus Parkinson and other central nervous symptoms. Moreover, these methods have proven useful and provided hope in the therapy of other diseases, most of all in psychiatry. From a historic perspective, this new emphasis on somatic therapies in the case of transcranial magnetic stimulation and cranial electrotherapy stimulation represents the return of therapeutic methods widely used in the 19th century and based on very similar techniques. Against the background of a general rise in the importance of neurobiological concepts in the neurosciences, we are now in a new situation of change. Yet, as in the 1880s and 1990s, many epistemic questions remain unresolved, the methods not yet having been standardized. In particular, the inability to explain which way and precisely how electricity induces healing processes in the body continues to put the neurosciences, which have always regarded themselves as exact and scientific in nature, in a rather uncomfortable position. There was a similar situation in the 1880s and 1990s, when positivist scientific dogmas prevailed. For ideological and professional reasons, neurologists strongly rejected the notion pioneered by Leipzig neuropsychiatrist Paul Julius Mobius that curative effects of electrotherapy were based on suggestion. One should see, however, that Mobius's actual concern was not to raise opposition towards or question electrotherapy as such, but rather to sensitize his colleagues in view of the prevailing solely materialistic-somatic approach in order that they should not neglect the psychological component of all illness, both in clinical practice and in research. A singular and very special event illustrates the heated debate among German-speaking neurologists on the psychological/suggestive effects of electrotherapy in the last decade of the 19th century-namely the 'Frankfurt Council' of 1891. The statements made at the Frankfurt convention of 35 leading electrotherapists in opposition to Mobius's criticism very much resemble present-day arguments and attitudes. Yet neuroscientists of earlier generations also found very individual answers to fundamental questions in their field that might help both to understand problems from a long-term perspective and enrich present-day discussion as a beneficial corrective.