Magnetic Healing, Quackery, and the Debate about the Health Effects of Electromagnetic Fields

In January 1992, lawyers for a 21-year-old Connecticut woman who had a malignant brain tumor filed the first widely recognized and authoritatively researched U.S. lawsuit charging that the tumor was the direct result of the patient's protracted exposure to the electromagnetic field (EMF) generated in a nearby power line [1]. This case and other similar tort cases are being based in part on new suggestive evidence for adverse EMF bioeffects [2]. Well-known investigators in the field have recently published position papers on both sides of the EMF bioeffects problem [3, 4]. Both sides apparently agree that the debate has been hampered by the lack of a biochemical transduction mechanism capable of explaining how low-energy magnetic fields interact with human tissue [5]. If confirmed, the recent discovery by Kirschvink and colleagues [6] of substantial deposits of elemental magnetite in human brain tissue may finally provide a mechanistic framework within which to analyze the epidemiologic and toxicologic data concerning EMF bioeffects. However, the sensational media coverage accorded the neural magnetite discovery and the instant skepticism and partisan hostility engendered by the magnetite announcement reflect the fact that the EMF bioeffects problem continues to be surrounded by an aura of pseudoscience, quackery, and disrepute [7-9]. This article traces the history of biomagnetism and magnetic healing, concentrating on the charlatanism and quackery that have plagued the field for centuries and that may now be limiting legitimate scientific investigation by placing the field off-limits to respectable medical investigators. The History of Biomagnetism For more than 2000 years, the effects of magnets and low-frequency electromagnetic fields on biological processes have been investigated and debated [10, 11]. The term magnet was probably derived from Magnes, a shepherd who discovered mysterious iron deposits attracted to the nails of his sandals while he was walking in an area near Mount Ida in Turkey (Magnesia) [11]. These deposits, now known to be magnetite (magnetic oxide, Fe3O 4), were known to the ancients as Heraclean Stones, lodestones (leading stones), or live-stones (lapis vivus). Plato claimed that it was Euripides who first coined the term magnet and who attributed magnetic force to a kind of mineral soul within the stone [12]. Pliny the Elder recorded several examples of the potential use of these lodestones, such as the plans of the Macedonian architect Deinokrates to build a huge, magnetically levitating statue for Ptolemy II of Egypt [11]. Literary allusions to magnetism are found in the works of Chaucer, Bacon, and Shakespeare, who refer to magnets as adamants or adamaunds, from the Latin adamare meaning to be drawn to something through instinctive attraction and love [12]. These writers and their contemporaries assumed that the static electric attraction of nonferrous materials including hair or cloth to amber was also an example of the power and the mineral soul possessed by magnetic substances. Medieval Investigations: Medicinal Magnetism Peter Peregrinus is credited with writing the first major postclassical discourse on magnetism in 1289, describing in great detail the principles and use of the magnetic compass [13]. Medieval writers thought that magnets were capable of drawing the heart of a man out of his bodie without offending any part of him, and scholars believed magnets were causes and cures for melancholy [12]. Lodestones were thought to have strong aphrodisiac powers based on magnetic human attraction; magnetic cures for diseases such as gout, arthritis, poisoning, and baldness are documented in many medieval works [11]. More legitimate medieval applications included the use of magnets as probes and retrieval devices for shattered arrowheads, knife blades, and other iron foreign bodies [14]. Several important studies occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Swiss physician, philosopher, and alchemist Paracelsus (1493-1542) investigated the medical properties of lodestones in the treatment of diseases such as epilepsy, diarrhea, and hemorrhage [7, 11]. William Gilbert (1544-1603), physician to Queen Elizabeth I, wrote his classic text De Magnete in 1600 [15], describing hundreds of detailed experiments on electricity and terrestrial magnetism and debunking many quack medicinal uses of the magnet. Thomas Browne (1605-1682) continued this attack on popular magnetic salves and remedies, suggesting that their putative healing power was due only to incorporated herbal and mineral compounds [11]. The 17th century physician Kirches (1602-1680) developed a magnetic cure for strangulated hernias in which the patient was first fed iron filings and the imprisoned intestine was then freed from the surrounding muscular sheath through the external application of powerful magnets [12]. In a similar manner, magnets were used by early oculists to retrieve iron splinters from the eyes of blacksmiths and other metal workers. Animal Magnetism and the Rise of Magnetic Quackery By the middle of the 18th century, durable high-power magnets were available throughout Europe. Among the European researchers who began to investigate the medical powers of these magnets was the Czechoslavakian-born Jesuit Maximillian Hell [16], chief astronomer at the University of Vienna and a respected experimentalist who published a treatise on magnetism in 1762 [17, 18]. Though Father Hell's professional duties prevented him from spending much time developing his magnetic theories, he did manage to interest one of his younger university colleagues in the field. This young man was Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), a brilliant and iconoclastic young intellectual trained in mathematics, medicine, and law who was known for his quick mind, stylish clothes, theatrical demeanor, and riveting gaze (Figure 1). The young Mesmer's doctoral thesis, Dissertatio physicomedice de planetarum influxu (1766), dealt with the effects of gravitational fields and cycles on human health and was extensively influenced by the writings of Paracelsus and the work of Richard Mead [19, 20]. Over the next several years, Mesmer refined his theories and eventually suggested that gravitational forces might interact with the human body in such a way as to produce a sort of sympathetic magnetic flux capable of profound neuropsychiatric and constitutional effects. He called this process animal magnetism (magnetisonum animalem) and felt that he had stumbled upon a fundamental biophysical force analogous to gravity [20, 21]. Figure 1. Franz Anton Mesmer. During the early 1770s, the young Mesmer began a medical practice among the prosperous salon society of Vienna, becoming friendly with many Austrian court musicians and artists including W. A. Mozart [18]. Mesmer was especially interested in neuropsychiatric syndromes and intractable emotional problems, and he continued to believe that biophysical phenomena might be responsible for some aspects of these illnesses [21]. To investigate this possibility, Mesmer and some colleagues (including a Swabian mystic named J. J. Gassner) quietly began to conduct preliminary clinical investigations in 1774. In 1775, at the age of 41, Mesmer published his first major medical treatise in the form of an open letter to a foreign correspondent, Dr. J. C. Unzer, entitled On the medicinal uses of the magnet [20]. Clinical Treatment This letter recounts the clinical details of his treatment of an unnamed, young female patient (later identified as a distant relative named Francisca Oesterlin) who had episodic convulsions and hysteria. In his journals, Mesmer noted that, before his treatment, she had mysterious attacks of uncontrolled and apparently unprovoked vomiting, urinary retention, toothaches, opisthotonus, blindness, melancholy, and paralysis [22]. Mesmer believed that he could discern a fixed periodicity in the timing of some of these attacks, and, based on his previous theories concerning gravitational and magnetic interactions, he resolved to attempt to cure her by means of a magnetic counterflux (a kind of artificial tide produced by means of a magnet) [20]. This magnetotherapy was aimed at breaking the influence of a celestial force that Mesmer believed was interfering with the natural magnetic harmony of Oesterlin's body. Mesmer obtained some anatomically contoured steel magnets from his astronomic colleague Father Hell, and on 28 July 1774, Mesmer did his pioneering clinical experiment. He attempted to interrupt the cycle of Oesterlin's attacks by first having the patient swallow an iron-rich solution and then attaching conformal magnetic soles to each of her feet and a heart-shaped magnet to her chest. His notes describe the effects of this magnetic counterflux. She soon underwent a burning and piercing pain which climbed from her feet to the crest of the hip bone, where it was united with a similar pain that descended from one side-from the locality of the magnet attached to her chest-and climbed again to the other side where it ended at the crown .This transport of pain lasted all night and was accompanied by abundant sweating of the side paralyzed by the former attack. Finally, (her) symptoms disappeared [20]. Mesmer felt that these effects were more dramatic than could be expected based on his earlier work with simple terrestrial magnets. Instead, he postulated that another, more mysterious type of universal magnetic force was responsible for Oesterlin's recovery. Mesmer proposed that this secondary force derived from his own highly advanced psychic abilities as a conduit and focuser of the magnetic flux [22]. Downplaying the therapeutic importance of Hell's steel magnets, Mesmer ascribed Oesterlin's cure to the successful manipulation of a universally permeating (fluid-like) biophysical flux (analogous to other post-Newtonian theories of matter/force interactions) capable of influencing virtually all physiologic p