INTRODUCTION.

Considerable parts of this book have been written for the unlearned. For the scholarly reader such parts, of course, would be wholly superfluous; yet it is hoped that they to whom these are familiar will be patient in passing through them for the sake of others to whom they may be instructive. Other parts, again, it is believed, will be found new to the most of even educated minds. But men of the largest intellectual attainments are commonly the most docile. Such men, meeting this little work, will not shrink from a candid examination of its contents merely on account of their comparative novelty, nor because the views expressed differ essentially from those usually held by the medical faculty. The candid, yet critical, attention of such gentlemen, the author especially solicits. He assures them that he does not write at random, but from careful research and practical experience. His philosophic theories he offers only for what they are worth. His principles of practice he believes to be scientifically correct and of great value.

Let it not be supposed that the author, in this work, assumes a belligerent attitude towards the members of the medical profession. Although anxious to modify and elevate their estimate of electricity as a remedial agent, and to improve their methods of using it, he has no sympathy with those who profess to believe, and who assert, that medicines of the apothecary never effect the cure of disease; that where they are thought to cure, they simply do not kill; and who contend that the patient would have recovered quicker and better to have taken no medicine at all. He knows that such allegations are false, as they are extravagant; and so does every candid and unprejudiced observer whose experience has given him ordinary opportunities to judge. The writer believes it can be perfectly demonstrated that the advancement of medical science in modern times—say within the last two or three hundred years—has served to essentially prolong the average term of human life. The world owes to medical instructors and practitioners a debt of gratitude which can never be paid. Their laborious and often perilous research in the fields of their profession, and their untiring assiduity in the application of their science and skill to the relief of human suffering, entitle them to a degree of confidence and affectionate esteem which few other classes of public servants can rightly claim. For one, the author of this little book most sincerely concedes to them, as a body, his confidence, his sympathy, and his grateful respect. And the most that he is willing to say to their discredit, (if it be so construed), is that he regards them as having not yet attained perfection in their high profession, and as not being generally as willing as they should be to examine fairly into the alleged merits of remedial agents and improved principles of practice, (claimed to be such), when brought forward by intelligent, cultivated and respectable men, outside of "the regular profession." This is said at the same time that the author gives much weight to their commonly offered defense, viz: that, in the midst of professional engagements, they have not always the time to spare for such examination; and that, since the most of alleged improvements in the healing art, particularly of those introduced by persons who have not received a regular medical education, sooner or later prove themselves to be worthless, the presumption—though not the certainty—is, whenever a new agent, or a new method or principle is proposed by an "outsider," that this, too, if not willful charlatanism, is a mistake; and therefore, the sooner it comes to an end the better it will be for the public health, and that neglect is the surest way to kill it.

But the medical faculty have too widely employed electricity in the treatment of disease, and that with too frequent success, to admit of its being denied a place among important therapeutic agents by any respectable practitioner. The only questions concerning it now are those which relate to the versatility of its power, the scope of its useful applicability, and the principles which should guide in the administration of it. The general subject embraced in these questions is one in which suffering humanity has a right to claim that physicians shall be at home.

And yet it will scarcely be denied that, in the exhibition of electricity, more than of almost any other therapeutic agent, medical practitioners feel incertitude as to what shall be its effect. Now and then it acts as they expected it to do; sometimes it pleasantly surprises them; oftener it offensively disappoints them. They find it unreliable. Of other remedial agents, they commonly know, before administering them, what sort of effect will be produced; but in employing this, while they have hope, they are generally more or less in doubt. They regard it as a stimulant; although its action on the living organism appears to them to be largely veiled in mystery. In many cases of disease, particularly those of acutely inflammatory or febrile character, they judge it to be not at all indicated. To administer it in a case of bilious or typhoid fever, or in a case of pneumonia, pleuritis, gastritis, inflammatory rheumatism, or acute, and especially epidemic or malignant dysentery, or in a case of pulmonary phthisis, would probably be viewed by the most of physicians as the rashest empiricism, if not the next thing to madness. The idea of producing antagonistic effects with it at will, they would, for the most part, esteem preposterous. Rather, perhaps, it may be said of the majority of medical practitioners that such an idea has never entered their minds; so foreign is it to their conceptions of truth and propriety. But, at whatever risk of discredit or censure, the writer of the present volume avers that this idea is both scientifically sound and of every day's practical verification. The various and opposite forms of disease—acute and chronic, hypersthenic and asthenic—are habitually treated and cured, in his own practice and that of his students, by electricity alone.

But "cui bono?" may be asked. "What if it be true that these things can be done with electricity? They are also done with medicines, which are more quickly and conveniently administered, and usually less annoying to the patient. What, therefore, is the practical utility of your electric system above the ordinary practice, especially if we include, in the latter, electrical treatment as occasionally employed by the most of respectable physicians?"

This is the important question—that to which the author desires to call particular attention. He, therefore, answers:

First.—It is manifestly true that the most of diseases, (the exceptions are comparatively few), can be cured by the use of medicines. It is also true that these can generally be administered with more convenience and less expenditure of time to the practitioner than electricity; and this is a great advantage. The author is often asked if he thinks his electric system will ever supersede the use of medicines. His answer is uniformly, "No." It takes too much time for that. Where the population is crowded, as in cities and large towns, it is often the case, especially in times of prevailing epidemic, that a physician can prescribe medicine for half a dozen or more patients in the time required to treat one electrically. To reject medicines and rely alone on electricity would, in periods and places of prevailing sickness, leave many sufferers without professional service, or would require that the proportion of doctors to the whole population should be largely increased—a thing certainly not often to be desired. So much, candor must concede.

Second.—It is not quite true that medicines are usually less annoying to the patient than electricity as we use it. As administered by others, it is often nearly intolerable. In our hands, on the contrary, it seldom inflicts any pain or distress, and almost invariably becomes agreeable to the patient after a very few applications. We have no occasion to torture our patients in order to cure them. But the cases are comparatively rare where medicines are not offensive; commonly they are excessively so.

Third.—In not a few diseases, and these among the most dangerous or distressful, the electric current, employed according to the system here taught, is able to reach, control and cure, with facility, where medicines are but slowly, and in most instances imperfectly successful, or fail altogether. This is said, or meant to be said, not invidiously nor boastingly, but in the candid utterance of a great and practically demonstrated truth. It is, perhaps, most often exemplified in neuralgic, rheumatic and paralytic affections. The author is happy to acknowledge that these diseases are frequently mitigated, and occasionally cured, by means of electrical treatment administered by those who know nothing of the system here taught. But the important fact is, in their hands there is no certainty as to the effect before trial. Under this system, the kind of effect is as certainly known before as after the trial, since it can be made one thing or another at will.

Cases are not unfrequently presented of inflammatory action, more especially where it is internal—traumatic cases and others—which the practitioner finds it impossible to subdue with medicine. But, with a proper knowledge of the system herein taught, he has at his command a power with which he can control such cases with almost infallible certainty, provided he can get access to them within reasonable time. The same may be said of fevers, particularly those occasioned by miasmatic or infectious virus. These are often difficult to manage by the use of medicine, and not seldom prove fatal, in spite of the best talent and skill which the profession can afford. But the electric current, rightly selected and scientifically applied, destroys or neutralizes the virus and restores the normal polarization, and so effects a cure.

Neuralgic affections