The electrical stimulation of the inner ear, from the eighteenth century to the cochlear implant.

The cochlear implant (bionic ear) is a device that bypasses a nonfunctional inner ear and stimulates the hearing nerves with patterns of electrical currents so that speech and sounds can be perceived by profoundly deaf people. The function of cochlear implant is today well known but, its early development through the history of electrical stimulation of the ear is uncertain. The Count Alessandro Volta is generally qualified as the first to stimulate the ear with the electricity. His results were read on June 26, 1800, before the Royal Society meeting in London. Investigating exhaustively the available literature of the eighteenth century, we found an electrical stimulation of the ear carried out, half century before Volta, in 1748 by Giuseppe Veratti a Bolognese physicist.