Paper PS+PB-TuM1
Lessons from Tesla for Plasma Medicine

Tuesday, October 23, 2018, 8:00 am, Room 104C

It can be argued that plasma medicine originated with Nikolai Tesla in the late 19th century when he showed that one could pass large quantities of high frequency currents through a human body with no apparent damage. [1, 2] Tesla interpreted the significant sensations he experienced following exposure to these currents as being potentially valuable therapeutically. Tesla's work inspired much more extensive investigations over a period of several decades by numerous other researchers, on both the physics and biomedical effects of these currents. Researchers such as Arsene d'Arsonval and Paul Oudin in France and Frederick Strong in the United States, among others, were important pioneers. These early pioneers had a surprisingly modern view of some aspects of the therapeutic mechanisms of high frequency currents that clearly overlap with recent results. The perspective of this community was that the most important physiological effects are associated with the high frequency currents rather than the gas phase plasma. Some early work, such as the analgesic effects of dielectric barrier air plasma on tissue, is not well known today. [3] The range of afflictions that early practitioners treated successfully is remarkable. This body of work, in some cases almost 130 years old, has important lessons for current investigations into plasma medicine. Observations from Tesla and other early practitioners suggests that high frequency currents are potentially important and plasma medicine researchers should probably pay more attention to them.

[1] F.F. Strong, High Frequency Currents, Herman Company, New York, 1908.

[2] S.H. Monell, High Frequency Electric Currents in Medicine and Dentistry, WR Jenkins, New York, 1910.

[3] P. Oudin, Application therapeutique locale des courants de haute frequence en gynecologie, Archives d'électricité médicale, 287, 10 juin, 1910.