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Bioelectromagnetism

 

Svante August Arrhenius (1859–1927), a Swedish chemist, professor at Stockholm, performed stimu­

lating efect experiments with electricity on the growth in children. Tis appeared as an interesting

article in Te New York Tribune, April 1912:

Paris, April 5- Te Swedish doctor, Svante Arrhenius, has concluded some interesting experiments

in Stockholm to test the efect of electricity on the growth of human organism. According to the

“Matin” two groups of ffy children, roughly corresponding in age, health, weight, height and

intelligence, were chosen from among the pupils of the Swedish communal schools. One of these

groups of ffy children was set to work in a room which was flled with an electric installation

which passed high currents into the atmosphere from the wires in the walls, foor and ceiling.

Te other group was set to work in an ordinary classroom. None of the children or the teachers

knew that the experiment was being made. At the end of six months the children who had lived

in the electrifed atmosphere were found to have grown on an average three-quarters of an inch

most marked manner, and they completely outclassed the non-electrifed children in a competitive

examination. Te electrifed teachers declared that their own powers of resistance to fatigue had

been increased by the treatment.

New York Tribune (1912)

Arrhenius was one of the founders of physical chemistry, and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1903,

in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered to the advancement of chemistry by his

electrolytic theory of dissociation.

In the middle of the twentieth century, Iwao Yasuda (1909–1983), professor at the Kyoto Prefectural

University of Medicine, and his co-worker applied pressure to bones, and measured the piezoelectricity

of bones (Yasuda, 1954; Fukada and Yasuda, 1957), and identifed the relationship between mechani­

cal loading (pressure) and the piezoelectricity in bones. Piezoelectricity is the production of electricity

and/or electrical polarization of bone in response to applied pressure. Teir result was soon confrmed

by C. Andrew L. Bassett (1924–1994), professor at the University of Columbia, and Robert Otto Becker

(1923–2008), professor at Upstate Medical Center in State University of New York, Syracuse, and Director

of Orthopedic Surgery at the Veterans Administration Hospital (Bassett and Becker, 1962). Clinical

attempts have been made to apply direct and/or low-frequency electromagnetic felds to promote the

healing of fractured bones. Since then, many therapeutic studies have been published (Bassett et al.,

1974, 1981). Yasuda is acknowledged as the pioneer in the feld of research on electrical currents in bones.

However, until the middle of the 1980s, most clinical studies did not use double-blind, randomized,

placebo-controlled studies. Barker et al. frst published a series of double-blind, randomized, placebo-

controlled studies on bone healing by pulsed magnetic feld (1984). Te results were generally positive.

Binder et al. published an article to test the usefulness of pulsed electromagnetic felds for the treatment

of persistent rotator cuf tendinitis in a double-blind controlled study (1984). Tis therapeutic study

showed that pulsed electromagnetic felds may be useful in the clinical treatment. Since then, many clin­

ical and laboratory animal experiments with electromagnetic felds have been published, and it appears

that the efcacy of electric and magnetic feld therapy has been established.

Potential techniques of electric stimulation such as direct electric current, capacitive coupling, and

inductive coupling have been studied. In the case of direct electrical current, two electrodes must be

in direct contact with the surface of the skin surrounding the tissue. Capacitive coupling has no direct

contact with the body. In the case of inductive coupling, a time-varying magnetic feld induces an

electrical feld that produces a current in the conductive tissue. Electric stimulation techniques due to

the application of electromagnetic felds from outside the tissue have been applied to recover delayed

union, nonunion, acute fracture, and joint arthrodesis. Electric stimulation can also be defned as the

signifcant and statistical enhancement of proliferation, diferentiation, regeneration, and remodeling

of biological cultured tissues. Modern approaches in this feld began with the use of electromagnetic

devices by orthopedic surgeons who attempted to heal bone fractures. Tis feld developed progressively