Galvanotherapie der Nerven- und Muskelkrankheiten

Berlin: August Hirschwald, 1858. FIRST EDITION. Contemporary paper over boards, worn with some tears on edges and corners, spine label; interior in good condition with only some minor spotting. First edition. Remak was the first to develop electrotherapy using the galvanic current as a treatment, claiming that the electricity the procedure produced had a catalytic effect. This in turn aided in the cure of many different nervous and muscular ailments. He treated around 700 patients using the galvanic current, which he argued was a superior method to the previously used faradic current. Today, galvanotherapy (now electro-chemical-therapy or ECT) is used primarily to treat cancer, applying electric current to tumors attempting to the change pH values and electric field in the tissue.

Remak (1815–1865) was a Jewish Polish-German physician and an important figure in the field of neurology. In addition to his work in electrotherapy, he also discovered that cells were the product of the division of pre-existing cells in the body by studying chicken embryos and frog eggs (a discovery that Rudolf Virchow claimed as his own). Remak also reconfigured Karl Ernst von Baer’s four germ layers to three. However, despite his achievements, he never received full professor status at the University of Berlin where he taught. He eventually was appointed assistant professor––the first Jewish individual to achieve that rank.

DSB, XI, pp. 367-70; Garrison & Morton, 4534; Haymaker and Schiller, Founders of Neurology, p. 68; Rowbottom and Susskind, Electricity and Medicine, pp. 103-8; Schmiedebach, “Robert Remak (1815–1865). A Jewish physician and researcher between recognition and rejection,” Zeitschrift für ärztliche Fortbildung 84 (1990): pp. 889–94.