Neuroscience Talk by Dr. Finger on April 21

You are cordially invited to a talk by:

Stanley Finger, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus of Psychology
Washington University in St. Louis
http://artsci.wustl.edu/~sfinger/
Senior Editor of the "Journal of the History of the Neurosciences"
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/0964704X.asp

“Benjamin Franklin and the Birth of Medical Electricity: A Founding Father's Forays into the Neurosciences”

Wednesday, April 21, 2010
4:00 p.m.
Psychology Building, Room 101

Abstract: Benjamin Franklin was deeply involved with science, medicine, and psychology throughout his long life. One of the medical questions that most interested him was whether electricity might have medical utility. He was the leading "electrician" of his day and he was one of the first individuals to conduct "tryals" on people with palsies to see if electrical shocks from machines could restore their normal movement. Franklin recognized that electricity was not the miraculous cure it was hoped to be in this domain, and he presented his findings in 1757 as communication to the Royal Society of London. Although he did not provide names at that time, his letters reveal that he treated several very important colonists after their strokes. He also did experiments to see if electricity might cure deafness, which it did not. But when it came to hysteria, he had success. Perhaps most fascinating of all, he and Dutch physician Jan Ingenhousz suggested that electricity applied to the head may help patients suffering from melancholic madness. Their idea, presented in the 1780s, was quickly confirmed, this being well over a century before electroconvulsive shock therapy was "discovered" in Italy. The rediscoverers of modern electroconvulsive shock therapy believed that a loss of memory was basic to its effectiveness, again not realizing that Franklin was the first to describe shock-induced amnesia. These and other aspects of Franklin's overlooked forays into medicine will be presented in the content of this Founding Father's truly remarkable life.

Sponsored by – The Program in Neuroscience and The Neuroscience NIDA Training Grant