Is it possible that the magnetic therapy used by physicians in ancient Egypt to keep their young queen healthy does have a positive effect?

Not so long ago, magnetic therapy was pretty much shunned by mainstream medicine, dismissed as ineffective and, even worse, condemned as quackery.

Any benefits it might have, said the sceptics, could be explained by the placebo effect: patients believed that it worked, so it did.

But there is now mounting evidence that magnetic therapy can be effective.

More than 300 research teams around the world, at institutions such as Imperial College London, and California, Yale and Harvard Universities, have found evidence of positive effects.

It has been shown to work in conditions as diverse as arthritis, depression, incontinence, wound healing, epilepsy and spinal injuries, and is being investigated as a treatment for many more, including cancer, migraine and multiple sclerosis.

 

It can even, it is suggested, help to straighten crooked teeth, encourage bone to grow and help people who hear voices but have not responded to drug treatments.

Back in ancient Egyptian times and beyond, it is likely that the original idea of magnet therapy stemmed from the unusual effects of natural stones.

That is almost certainly why Cleopatra wore a naturally magnetic lodestone on her forehead to slow down the ageing process.

Before and since, many cultures have used magnetic therapy, and although it has always been part of the treatment portfolio of alternative medicine, it has remained largely at the margins of mainstream medicine because of the lack of good scientific evidence that it works.

Over the years, one or two good studies have surfaced hinting that something might be happening as a result of magnetic therapy, but the real turning point came when gold-standard, double-blind clinical trials, in which no one knows who is being treated with what, began to support some of the earlier claims.

There are two main ways of using magnets in medicine. The high-tech way is magnetic stimulation of the brain. The more traditional technique uses other types of magnet to stimulate specific areas of the body. There is now evidence that both approaches work in different ways for different conditions.

One of the landmark studies for the high-tech way has come from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, which showed that magnetic stimulation of the brain eases severe depression.

After two weeks of treatment, half of the patients showed a 50 per cent improvement in symptoms. Half the patients also had no need for further treatment with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), and all those who had been given a dummy treatment did need it. "Our findings are very exciting since they provide clear evidence for the effectiveness of magnetic therapy, at least over the short term," says Dr Ehud Klein.