Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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who wish " to know themselves," or the philosophy of our being, particularly if medical men, — I say, no such person can possibly study this subject without the profoundest interest and substantial improvement. Physicians, of all men, should be frank towards each other. More than other men, we are dependent upon each other for facts, from which, when sufficiently numerous, we must reason up to generalization, and thus slowly discover and establish the laws of nature, as the rules of our ethics, to comprehend life, disease, and death. Isolated phenomena or experiments, nay, even a life-long experience in medicine, is worse than unavailing, so far as it affects knowledge and improve- ment, if it is pursued only by a dogmatic routine, or in support of a foregone conclusion. Only the one thing in that case is clearly seen ; and that is, just what had always been expected," according to the creed." The reasonable means, or the successive steps to the end obtained, are entirely overlooked. Let this, therefore, be our caution. We must hold, that the uncompromising lessons of careful and practical induction should attend our every step, as special stu- dents'in this interesting but intricate department of science and medicine; for no conclusion has ever stood the test of time, and gained general consent with the intelligent, that is not strictly in harmony with the laws of nature, and with the moral laws of God. The author, being profoundly convinced of the efficacy of electric currents as a remedy, capable of producing, often, a radical cure, especially in nervous affections, bespeaks a generous and impartial reception by our American medi- cal world, of what is already achieved for and in electro-physiology and electro- therapeutics ; i. e., as to what relates, in a scientific sense, to the medical uses of Electricity. When Physiology is usually treated of as a science, and presented as a part of the foundation of a thorough medical education, then, of course, it embraces the whole organic nature. All classes of organized beings and organisms have there an appropriate chapter, according to the mode of development, &c. But here we give place to one grand phase of physiology and pathology, as a some- what new, but soon to be realized, indispensable, help-science to the heal- ing art. All medical practitioners may not wish to give their time and attention, personally, to the employment of any electric apparatus; and but few may wish to make those diseases called " Neuralgies " and " Palsies " their exclusive practice ; but still, no one member of an educated medical profession can now- adays be uninformed in normal and abnormal nervo-electric phenomena (that is, in electro-physiology and electro-pathology) without discredit to himself and injustice to his patient. Pathology, young as it is, has been already admitted as an accredited wit- ness of very peculiar importance. But a few years since, and we know that there was no professor's chair for it in any of our medical schools. Now, who does not know that it is a very " law and testimony " ? Yet post-mortem and ocular pathology gives us but comparatively little insight into the devia- tions and lesions of the human nervous system. But, at this very weakest