Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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Cholera. In 1854, Dr. C. Meinig called the attention of the medical world to the great value of the primary current of galvanism in the treatment of choleraic diarrhoea. Where the symptoms are, violent, bowel discharges are attended with pains, cramps, and spasms, or movements and borborygnms in the bowels, with swashy diarrhoea, vomiting, cold sweating, cramping sensation in the legs, &c. The method he pursued in such cases is thus given: — The positive electrode of his portable (and powerful) com- pound galvanic battery was first applied to the spine, between the shoulders; the negative pole being placed on the abdominal region, and occasionally moved higher up or lower down, according to the varying seat of the pains, and coldness in the bowels. The good effect of the current was uniformly per- ceived at once, in a feeling of warmth and tone in the bowels, the pains uniformly and entirely disappearing in about half an hour ; both the diarrhoea and vomiting subsided only grad- ually, in the course of from two to five hours, when slight weak- ness was left, the urine reappearing shortly after the applica- tion of electricity, probably through the action of the current on the urinary organs. He says, " I have witnessed these results in eight cases, one of them finally being in my own per- son ; in which case, to attest my confidence, I purposely ab- stained from employing any other remedy whatever. It was here often found necessary to communicate the current to the abdomen by means of a metallic plate electrode, of sufficient size to cover the whole abdominal region, as the patients com- plained that the warmth was limited to the exact position of the previously used small disk, and did not sufficiently pervade the whole abdomen. In one or two cases, I observed the remark- able circumstance, that while the diarrhoea lasted, the pricking sensation at the negative pole was almost nil; whereas, after the disappearance of the complaint, the skin was blistered, in about a quarter of an hour, by the power of the current. I certainly 53*