Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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recovered from the effects of the blow and terror ; and that he would not take a second shock for the kingdom of France. Various accounts are given of the effects of such shocks, re- peated by different persons in different places about those times; but we have space only for those of M. Wincklc, of Leipsic. He says that " the first trial of the Leyden experiment produced great convulsions in his body; that it put his blood into such a ttate of great agitation that he was for a time afraid of an ar- dent fever, and was obliged to use refrigerent medicines ; that he felt a heaviness in his head as if a great stone lay upon it. Twice it gave him a bleeding from the nose. His wife was the first woman who had the courage to try a shock, and from this she found herself so weak that she could hardly walk." Such were the first rude and rash experiments made witli dynamic electricity on the human body by shock; but sparks were em- ployed even before that; also for remedial purposes. M. Krat- zenstcin, a German physician, was the first to record, in 1744, a methodical treatment and cure, which was a case of paralysis of the fingers, cured by sparks drawn from the then common electrical machine. Next we find " A Treatise on the Effects of Electricity upon the living Human Body," by M. Jallabert, which was published in 1748. He sums up the most general phenomena observed from the application of electricity as fol- lows : First, an acceleration of the pulse; second, an increase in the warmth of the part; and third, involuntary contractions actually produced in palsied muscles. This, we take it, must have been the first work on electro-therapeutics. Small as were the resources, and few the beneficial results, yet the then med- ical world did not let the matter rest, for the Abbe" Sans, in 1772, published a work on medical electricity, in which are found reported the treatment of eight cases of paralysis, some cured and others very much benefited by the sparks and shocks, which was all that was known of electricity up to that time. But in 1778, in consequence of a highly favorable account of the curative effects of electricity, which was made before the Socictc Royale de Medecine, at Paris, by Dr. Mauduit, the em- ployment of electricity, for various diseases, through the med-