The medical use of electricity : with special reference to general electrization as a tonic in neuralgia, rheumatism, dyspepsia, chorea, paralysis, and other affections associated with general debility : with illustrative cases / by Geo. M. Beard, and A.D. Rockwell.

  • Beard, George M. (George Miller), 1839-1883.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical use of electricity : with special reference to general electrization as a tonic in neuralgia, rheumatism, dyspepsia, chorea, paralysis, and other affections associated with general debility : with illustrative cases / 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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    Frommhold, and Eulenberg—are numbered among his disciples. For some time a fierce and unreasonable con- troversy was carried on between Remak and Duchenne, which, both in its character and in its results, singularly reminds one of the fabled story of the knights who quarrelled over the pictures on the opposite side of the public sign. Eemak contended for the apphcation of the galvanic stream on the motor nerves, while Du- chenne persisted that the best results were obtained with the faradaic, or induced current, on the muscles themselves. At a public trial in Paris (as we are informed by Gar- ratt), Eemak demonstrated on a hving subject that so far as pro'^ucing contraction of a muscle goes, the induced current applied to the motor nerves is far less painful than when applied to the muscular substance. But so far as the general remedial effects of electricity are con- cerned, both were in the right, as is now tolerably well established. GALVANIZATION AND FARADAIZATION. So far as is yet ascertained, the remedial effects of electricity, whether employed in the form of galvaniza- tion or faradaization, are governed by no fixed laws. Experience is our only guide in their use. All the in- vestigations of scientific men have thus far failed in re- ducing to any system the different therapeutical effects of the galvanic and the faradaic or induced currents.