Arsène d'Arsonval was elected to the Chair of Medicine in 1894, on the death of Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard, for whom he had been deputy since 1888, having been his assistant from 1878 to 1887. All his teaching and research focused on medical electricity, a discipline of which he was one of the founders, and which was recognized internationally, to the extent that the new type of electrical therapy he developed became known in France and abroad as darsonvalisation.

From 1887 to 1894, he taught at the Collège de Franceon the influence of electricity on living beings. In 1895, his lectures dealt with the Applications of electricity on living beings, and in 1899, with themain phenomena of electro-biology.

Arsène d'Arsonval's research and teaching illustrate the complex interplay between science, industry and medicine in the context of the second industrial revolution, from 1850 to 1914, which centered mainly on electricity and the chemical and oil industries : d'Arsonval drew on advances in physics and contemporary techniques to create innovative instruments for understanding the human body and developing electrotherapy. He was a prolific inventor, registering an impressive number of patents.

Arsène d'Arsonval first became interested in the telephone as part of his physiological research on muscles and animal electricity, then, as part of his work on deafness, as a means of collecting sound vibrations at a distance from the speaker and amplifying them : he thus adapted the telephone just patented by Alexander Graham Bell, in collaboration with physiologist and politician Paul Bert (1830-1886), a former student of Claude Bernard. In 1882, d'Arsonval and Bert patented their first " new telephone system ". The following year, d'Arsonval used the microphone as a " myophone " to study muscle vibrations in the state of contraction and at rest, and demonstrated its systematic response to electrical excitations. A series of patented improvements to these receivers and transmitters were incorporated into state telephone networks and used for several decades.

In 1890, inspired by Tesla's experiments, Arsène d'Arsonval investigated the therapeutic effects of high frequencies, which he claimed produced analgesic effects, vascular dilation and increased organic combustion. He developed several ways of applying these currents, gaining international recognition and making them the subject of his teaching. Believing that he had thus accomplished his work as a physiologist, he felt that it was up to doctors to study and exploit their therapeutic potential.

Although, in retrospect, d'Arsonval's electrical treatments appear to have had little effect, they nevertheless played an important role in the development of medical science. Indeed, more and more doctors of the time were learning about biological physics and medical electricity, while major instrument manufacturers were specializing in the production of medical equipment. The context created by electrotherapy enabled the rapid reception and deployment of X-rayssoon after their discovery in 1895.