Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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that may be —has an election for the cancerous part. In tuber- cles, successive exudations or deposits are made, which, by accu- mulation, augment the volume or amount of space occupied by the repeated deposits. Tumors of tubercular degeneration in glands, as about the neck, are doubtful cases, and should be approached with the cur- rents in the most cautious way. These are, after all, not a little inviting for this treatment, seeing that electricity produces, when properly employed, an increase of life in the tissues, and, in a word, tends to replace a normal state where it is abnormal; and why may it not aid to wash away the deposit which is always left in a debilitated spot ? Consumption. The first stages of tubercular phthisis is generally stated to be that in which the physical signs indicate a deposit in the lungs. But, able men in this speciality say, we must evidently go farther back ; there is unmistakable and undeniable evidence by ear- lier symptoms, than there are stethescopic signs — long before the able and most skilful observer can detect the sound which indicates the least shade, or degree, of solidification of the lungs, — there is an antecedent state of disordered health, act- ing as the causative agent, that originates the predisposition or tendency to the deposit of tubercle in the tissues, and elabo- rates or prepares the material in the system from which only tubercle is formed. To this very point I would entreat an ear- nest and careful attention. Here is the very " point of depart ure." It is not only the key to the very meaning of the name of this disease, but it is the only truly, i. e., uniformly, hopeful period for treatment. To sum up our opinion, then, much in the concise words of others, (but judging from our own most careful observation and experience, by questioning and examining some hundreds of such patients, and by the frankly avowed opinions verbally ex- pressed by those who have vastly greater opportunities in this speciality of thoracic diseases,) we feel no hesitation in saying 54