INTRODUCTION
When looking at the history of using electricity to stimulate muscles (ie, electric muscle stimulation [EMS] or electrostimulation), as with many other new medical and scientific concepts, we can infer there is nothing new under the sun. Ancient Egyptians had been treating pain by using fish that emitted electrical impulses over 2000 years ago. Documentation shows that fish (such as the electric torpedo ray) were used in the same way in Ancient Greece and Rome.1 Jumping forward to the 18th century, the Italian physician and scientist Luigi Galvani experimented on ‘bioelectricity’ in the use of electrical current applied to the spine to evoke muscle contractions in frogs’ legs.2 This then gave rise to the concept of galvanism (one fictitious product of which in the 19th century was Frankenstein’s monster [Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, 1818].) A technique developed in the early part of that century using electrostimulation therapy called Faradization successfully restored movement and function in patients with paralysis.3 Towards the latter part of the 19th century and into the 20th century, gradual acceptance of ‘electrostimulation therapy’ led to the development of specific devices very similar to our current concept of EMS (Figure 1). However, while these early EMS systems were effective, discomfort for the patient was reportedly very high. To bring us more up to date, following the success exhibited by Russian scientists in the use of direct EMS in muscle groups for their cosmonauts to counteract the weightless conditions encountered in orbit, Dr. Yakov Kots caught the attention of the sports medicine world by the success of the Russian athletes in the 1976 Montreal Olympics.
