Interesting. also, like how phrenology was discredited yet when recontextualized via neuroimaging it seems a similar paradigm, just different territory and cartography.

noting for completeness: connection of TENS and other such electronic devices with kinky sex culture...

Erotic electrostimulation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotic_electrostimulation

The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices is also in town here...
http://www.museumofquackery.com/

all of this reminds me of Alvin Toffler, (perhaps book Futureshock) who advised taking company tours such as of manufacturing facilities to learn how industry ecosystems function as another route to education, literacy, learning. there is a quackery devices, Bakken, and also a broadcast museum in town, though the advice extends towards visiting old mines, e.g. (MINOS Detecter) [0] or other facilities. in Berkeley i had a tour of their participle accelerator, fascinating to learn that a particle can be suspended by magnets, held in a stationary position prior to being merged with the other accelerating beam, or perhaps for being smashed into, i forget. though in a security-paranoid environment even these basic pleasures of learning seem off-limits in terms of ideas, on lock-down potentially, perhaps most so the threat of reinterpretation challenging ruling ideology. like every observer is a security threat and social relations and ideas tunneling inside that.

[0] http://www.hep.umn.edu/minos/overview/

On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 12:33 AM, Jim Bell <jamesdbell8@yahoo.com> wrote:

From: brian carroll <electromagnetize@gmail.com>

To: cypherpunks@cpunks.org
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2013 10:01 PM
Subject: dual-use (urls)

>Shocking Medical Devices From Another Century (via digg)
>http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/11/bakken-museum/?viewall=true

>[&] The Bakken Museum of Electricity in Life
>http://www.thebakken.org/

    In 1978, I visited the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC for the first (and so far, only) time. They had a display of "quack medical devices", that included a high-voltage AC device attached to glowing neon-bulb-type tubes. The idea was that these tubes would be pressed against a person's flesh, thus capacitively coupled through the glass, including a glowing light within the tube, and inducing a mild electrical current. At the time, I accepted the idea that this was, indeed, an example of a "quack medical device".
   In 1996, I began work at a Vancouver Washington contract-electronic-design/manufacturer firm. One of the major products that this company made were "TENS" devices. (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulators   http://www.tensunits.com/ ).   They were/are intended to reduce chronic pain. They worked in pretty much the same way that those "quack" early 1900's devices worked: Cause a AC small current to flow within flesh. What was thought to be 'quack' in 1978, turned out to not be 'quack' at all!
       Jim Bell