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

ings are erected, is intended for habitations, hospitals, barracks, and all public or private edifices in malarious localities, and particularly in those places where the amount of insalubrity is prevalent and dangerous. 17. That for so-called malarious districts, wet floors, or low places, a thick layer of dry lime, fresh from the kilns, produces very favorable galvanic changes, abates the low indication of negative electricity of these places for the time, puts a speedy end to several chemical changes going on in sewers and soils, and tends very much to ameliorate the atmospheric condition of the insalubrious habitations, in so far as electro-galvanic currents and accumula- tions are concerned. Dry lime is a non-conductor, and has been useful in ab- sorbing the moisture of damp rooms, and thereby diminishing their power of carrying electric currents to or from the inhabitants. 18. It had long since been proposed by Dr. Priestley to electrify a great number of patients at once, by placing them in a chamber raised upon glass feet. Mr. Ellis recommended, in 1831, that persons seized with cholera should receive their medical treatment in beds placed upon glass bottles, and be sup- plied with their remedies in glass vessels. All these ingenious suggestions were proposed for the use of persons already diseased; but my desire is to prevent persons from being epidemically diseased at all, as far as can possibly be accomplished. The above able gentlemen have suggested means of cure ; I recommend measures of prevention. Their propositions were never carried into effect; whereas my insulated houses were tried, and saved the inmates from attacks of disease in places where laborers, when previously unprotected, fell by dozens in fainting and fevers, from want of sufficient electricity to sus- tain the natural balance. Persons insulated by a very bad conductor, such as a floor of cold asphalt, and by clean dry flannel, or other insulators, cannot readily communicate electricity to the earth, nor receive electricity from it, if the air of the apartment be dry where they sleep, and free from filth and moisture. 19. The following may serve to convey an outline of my reasons for insu- lating public and private buildings. A cloud, strongly charged with positive electricity over the individual, will attract his negative electricity upwards, and repel his positive electricity towards the earth. After the cloud is discharged, passes away, or is neutralized, the two elementary fluids rush towards each other into the centre of the person's body. This action of the opposite cur- rents of the two elements often kills instantly. In milder cases, such electrical disturbance affects the animal fluids, as it affects beer in the cellar or milk in the dairy. 20. I consider that men's bodies, between the atmosphere and the earth, represent the chain of a Leyden jar, or of an electric machine, conducting negative electricity from the outside of the jar to the ground, or supplying positive electricity from the earth to the rubber. Were the surface of the floor well insidated, the chain could not readily give or receive the currents which otherwise pass through it.