A medical procedure using an electric current passed through needles inserted into the body, used in early medical treatments.
From galvano- (galvanism) + puncture (from Latin punctura, a pricking). Emerged in early 1800s medicine as doctors experimented with electricity as a therapeutic agent.
Galvanopuncture was an early electromedicine procedure—doctors would stick needles in patients and run electricity through them, hoping to cure everything from rheumatism to paralysis, based more on hope than on actual medical evidence.
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