Posts Tagged ‘headache’

During the Prusso-Danish war in 1864, German doctor Gustav Fritsch treated many soldiers with gaping wounds to the brain and happened to notice that when he touched one hemisphere of the brain, the opposite side of the body often twitched. Later, Fritsch systematically showed that, by electrically stimulating the brain, the left hemisphere could control the right side of the body, and vice versa. This was a stunning discovery, showing that the brain was basically electrical in nature and that a particular region of the brain controlled a part on the other side of the body. (Curiously, the use of electrical probes on the brain was first recorded a couple of thousand years earlier by the Romans. In the year 43 A.D., records show that the court doctor to the Emperor Claudius used electrically charged torpedo fish, which were applied to the head of a patient suffering from severe headaches.)

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