The History and Origin of the EEG

Abstract

The development of encephalography, like that of all other electrophysiological techniques, was dependent on advances in the science of electromagnetism finding appropriate applications in the mid- to late nineteenth century. However, there were one or two early attempts to investigate the relationship between electricity and living organisms during the eighteenth century, long before the technology existed to do so properly. According to Grey Walter in his book The Living Brain (Walter, 1953), informal experiments on executed criminals showed that electric shocks caused muscles to contract and twitch, and Louis XV ‘caused an electric shock from a battery of Leyden jars to be administered to 700 Carthusian monks joined hand to hand, with prodigious effect’. The Leyden jar was simply a primitive condenser, capable of storing static electricity for short periods of time, and more refined experiments had to await the invention of reliable sources of electric current.