Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.

PREFACE. Medical Students : For you have I prepared this work on Electro-thera- peutics, including Electro-physiology, Electro-pathology, and Electro-diagnosis. It is aimed to be a plain, practical, and systematic work. Electricity and Vitality are now known to be intimately related. It is an acknowledged fact, that medical men, at least, are not as familiar with the links of that relation- ship as they might be, and should be. Electricity, in its different forms and manifestations, is as absolutely and minutely concerned, according to their respective " laws of action,'' in every life, with health, growth, disease, and struggle for the recovery from disease, and in death, as in the grand chemistry of inanimate nature, or in the greater and mightier forces of gravitation and planetary revolution. Vitality is more than Electricity. Life is electro-chemistry vitalized. This greatest force of nature, viz., Electricity, which also holds such varied and powerful influences over life, health, and disease, does assuredly command our more attentive study, in connection with other rational medicine. The progress of medical science, during the past half century, has brought us into new and closer relations with almost all other departments of physical science ; but with none, however, in so intimate and indissoluble a manner as with this of Electricity. Hence it has come to pass, says De la Rive, that the study of Electricity, as it relates particularly to medical knowledge, and practice, has become an absolutely indispensable study for every one who practises, teaches, or in any way cultivates science, and wishes to be booked tip to the age and day. So also of the trades, arts, and sciences ; — to the pharmaceutist and chemist, as well as the natural philosopher; to the dentist and physiologist, as well as to the geologist; as much to the engineer and artisan as to the physician; — all, all have electric forces and phenomena to deal with, and consequently each has need of becoming familiar with them ; at least so far as they relate to the given trade or practice, he should be ena- bled to interpret them, to meet them, and to turn them to good account. The subject matter of this work, therefore, embraces more aspects than one. It presents you not only with a reliable and potent class of remedies, (together with the best methods for using them,) and fairly opens a field of improved treatment for many nervous derangements and diseases, but it also affords an instructive phase of nature in growth, waste, and repair; in cause and cure, or disease and remedy, and of nervous phenomena in particular ; thus throw- ing peculiar light on the whole range of the healing art. Indeed, it appears to me, that those who love, teach, or have to do with the natural sciences, or