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_ are frequently found difficult, or even
impossible, to be cured by means of medicines, and yet, in the very same
cases, these affections yield and disappear with comparative facility
when brought under the electric current, judiciously applied, according
to the principles of this new system.
_Chronic cases, and others of an asthenic character_, are often very
stubborn under the medicines of pharmacy, and are commonly the dread of
physicians; yet, under scientific treatment by electricity, they rarely
fail to lose their formidable character and to become obedient to the
remedial agent.
_Fourth._--In enumerating a few of the peculiar advantages of this
system, I should add that it corrects the usual _electric_ practice of
the profession, so far as they become acquainted with it. As before
intimated, the mass of physicians at present, who treat more or less
electrically, do so with no knowledge, or next to none, of the great
_versatility_ of action of which the electric current is capable. They
know nothing of the electrical polarization of the living organism in
health, nor how it is variously affected in disease. The particular
_electrical_ state of the diseased organs is a matter foreign to their
minds. They appear to suppose the point to be immediately aimed at as a
means of cure is to get the electricity from the machine into the
affected part or parts; whereas it should be to change, by correction,
the _polarization_ of the part or parts; and, if there be virus present,
to neutralize that. Equally unacquainted are they generally with the
diverse physiological action of the several modifications of the
electric force--galvanism, magnetism, faradism, and frictional
electricity. This, in their candor, they commonly acknowledge. And, for
the most part, they are little or nothing better acquainted with the
_distinctive_ effects on the system of the positive and negative poles
of the instrument. There is, therefore, plainly no _science_ in their
electrical practice. Every thing is done at random--all is empirical.
But the system here taught opens the light upon all of these points. For
practical purposes, at least, it is, in its essential features, the only
system of electrical therapeutics which has in it any real merit--the
only system which _can be true_. By this, the writer does not mean to
assert, or to imply, that the little book now before the reader contains
no error, either in respect to theory or practice. In this early stage
of our system's history, it would be remarkable if it did not contain
errors in both these respects. But what it is intended to affirm is,
that the book presents the _cardinal features_ of a true, and the only
possibly true, system of electrical practice. All possibly true systems
of geometry must necessarily be essentially the same; and so, too, all
possibly true systems of electrical medication must be essentially one.
That one system, it is candidly and confidently believed, is briefly
contained in the present little volume.