Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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ployed static electricity, giving the patient a dozen or so of shocks at each seance, from a quart Leyden jar, fully charged, and directed through the pelvic region from the lumbar or sacral spine to the symphasis pubis. By the reports of that hospital for the past fifteen years, it appears that this has been the chief reliance when the condition of the organism was right for its use, or had been prepared by iron and tonics, and that out of twenty-four cases of amenorrhcea twenty of them were thus cured. Dr. Duchenne in France has also been very s\ic- cessful with this class of patients, using invariably strong electro-magnetic currents locally applied, i. e., to the uterine organs. It is, I think, now a well-authenticated fact, that the appli- cation of a brisk electro-magnetic current to almost any part of the body or limbs, if about the period of her menstrua, is liable to induce a flow of the menses in any female that is at the time in a physiological state capable of that function. In treating these affections, it is always advisable to make such trials as will most possibly spare the moral sensibilities of our youthful patient. To this end, direct that a large moist sponge electrode be applied by herself or attendant to the groin, or perincEum, (which is better,) or to the upper inner side of the thigh, while the other electrode is carried by the operator's hand to the lumbar and sacral regions of the back. This last electrode should be the positive, and at high speed, while the tip of the conductor may be repeatedly touched, and for a few seconds retained, to the binding screw of the machine. Thus we are enabled to shock the patient, to increase the circulation in the uterine region, and to arouse the functions there to life. Generally speaking, I prefer maintaining one electrode some- where up or down the spine, even on the nucha or under the coccyx; let the other be where you please — over the pubis, vulva, or perinaeum, or in the vagina, or above the groin on either side. Never remove the electrodes until the seance is through, but suddenly break and make the contact at the bind- ing screw, also reversing the current direction now and then, (provided she is not a nervous person.) By this means we 52*