International text-book of medical electro-physics and galvanism : for the use of medical students and practitioners / by William J. Herdman [and others].

Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: International text-book of medical electro-physics and galvanism : for the use of medical students and practitioners / by William J. Herdman [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    INTRODUCTION. THE NECESSITY FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION IN ELECTRO-THERAPEUTICS. By WILLIAM J. HERDMAN, Ph.B., M.D.. ANN AKBOR, MICH. About ten thousand physicians within the borders of the United States make use of electricity as a therapeutical agent daily. Many others find occasional use for it. The surgeon and the ophthalmologist, the dentist and the gynaecologist,—in fact, the specialist in whatever field,—finds it a valuable aid to treatment, an indispensable handmaid. It is the mainstay of the neurologist both in diagnosis and treatment, and the rapid increase of exact knowledge in this branch of medical science is largely due to the service it has rendered. The more familiar we,be- come with tlie manifestations of electric energy, the more do we recog- nize its adaptations to the requirements of disordered physiological con- ditions. It is this lack of familiarity, on the part of the members of the medical profession, with the laws of electro-physics and physiology, more than any otlier cause, that has retarded the progress of electro-therapeutics. Had every student during the past decade been made acquainted, during his medical course, with the action of electric energy upon the A^arious tissues of the hurann body, and had he been instructed in the management of such appliances as are commonly employed for controlling such energy, there is not a general practitioner or a specialist among them who would not be making daily use of it in his practice with increased satisfaction to himself and benefit to his patients. So wide is the range of adaptability of electricity to the treatment of disease that it must become the common property of every physician, no-matter whether his work is general or special in its nature, and, such being the case, instruction in electro-thei'apeutics should liave a place in every medical-college curriculum. It is not generally understood what such instruction requires to be of any value to the student. It is useless for an instructor to attempt the inculcation of thera- peutic rules in the use of electricity to a class not familiar with the physical differences between frictional, voltaic, and induced currents; and it is worse than useless for the members of that class to attempt the application of such instruction to the patient if they are unfamiliar with the management of the machinery by which such different forms of elec- tric energy are applied. Such attempts are but doomed to ignominious