A practical treatise on the medical and surgical uses of electricity : including localized and general faradization, localized and central galvanization, franklinization, electrolysis and galvano-cautery / by Geo. M. Beard [and] A.D. Rockwell.

  • Beard, George M. (George Miller), 1839-1883.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on the medical and surgical uses of electricity : including localized and general faradization, localized and central galvanization, franklinization, electrolysis and galvano-cautery / by Geo. M. Beard [and] A.D. Rockwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    paralyzing influence it is none tlie less justifiable, on scientific and practical grounds, to use the terms sedative and tonic. The final rationale of no work or remedial force of any kind is com- pletely known to science, and, for practical uses, it is not necessary that it should be ; we, perhaps, know as much of the rationale of elec- tricity as of any agent that we use for the cure of disease. The more thoroughly one studies electro-therapeutics in all its re- lations, medical and surgical, the clearer it becomes that the real scientific basis for the use of electricity in medicine and surgery is found in electro-physics more than in electro-physiology; and for that reason it did not seem wise to very much abbreviate • the portion of this work allotted to that department. The rationale of general fara- dization and central galvanization, for example, can only be under- stood by those who have grasped the elementary principles of electro- physics, the laws of resistance and conductibility, and, above all, the law of Ohm, to which we have assigned a special chapter. Those who have been once well grounded in these laws of electro-physics find that the various special problems that arise, whether of a theoretical or practical character, very quickly resolve themselves. Now that electricity has become popular in medicine, there is, in some quarters, a temptation to overdo the application, not only in strength but in length and frequency ; to treat all cases alike by rou- tine, mechanical applications, regardless either of the disease or the idiosyncrasies of the patient; hence, in cases not a few, come results either negatively or temporarily injurious, with disappointment on all sides. The dosage of electricity is a special study of the greatest practical importance ; the difference in result between a very gentle and short application and a very strong and protracted one being, in some cases, all the difference between agreeable success and painful failure. There are persons who must be treated not only mildly but at long intervals, and there are persons with, perhaps, the same maladies that can bear with advantage powerful and frequent applications ; to dis- tinguish between these classes and the various gradations that lie be- tween the extremes of tolerance and of susceptibihty is the first duty, and, oftentimes, the hardest study of him who makes much use of electricity in medicine.