Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
171/740
- Publication/creation
- Boston : Ticknor and Fields, 1861.
- Physical description
- 3 unnumbered pages, 716 pages, 2 leaves of plates : illustrations ; 26 cm
- Contributors
-
Garratt, Alfred C. (Alfred Charles), 1813?-1891
Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library
- Notes
-
3d ed. has title: Medical electricity
Includes index and testimonials
- Type/technique
- Electronic books
- Subjects
-
Electrophysiology
Electrotherapeutics
- Attribution and usage
-
This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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The image contains the following text:
CHAPTER IV.
ELECTRO-PHYSIOLOGY.
Electro-Biology.
The researches of modern physiologists hare clearly shown
that all organic beings are resolved into ultimate cells, and that
the functions of growth and nutrition are performed through
these cells. Here, then, is the nucleus and sum total of life.
But the great French physician, Bichat, says, "Life is the sum'
of those functions by which death is resisted." Life, in its
widest signification, says Dr. Alfred Smee, is a term to designate
the combined functions of assimilation, growth, nutrition, excre-
tion, <tc.; that these changes, occurring in the organization of
man, constitute the vital phenomena of life ; that these, together
with the action of the senses, of thought, memory, reason, word,
and deed, are consecmently subject and obedient to physical
laws ; and that the functions of animal life are alike obedient to
the fundamental law in physics, namely, that no force can possi-
bly be generated without some corresponding equivalent change
in matter. This is demonstrated in man, as we observe after
action ; for there is an increase of excretion, with greater desire
for food and rest.
With regard to these ultimate cells of animal bodies, one of
the most wonderful and extraordinary results which I have ob-
served is, the action of electricity by induction, as obtained in
the interrupted to-and-fro currents of electro-magnetism. But
to study them in their nicest forms we often must have recourse
to cases where they are found to exist in the simplest conditions.
When the web of a frog's foot, for instance, is placed in the field
of the microscope and this kind of current is directed through