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

sulated from the ground. The tub is then filled with warmish water until the patient is up to the neck in it. If it is supposed that the patient is poisoned with mercury, or with silver, or gold, then the water is acidulated with nitric or hydrochloric acid; but if lead is to be extracted, then sulphuric acid is added to the water bath, in the place of the other acid. The galvanic elec- tricity must be large, both as to quantity and intensity, and the long-continued, even current is the kind for this purpose. The negative pole is connected with the foot of the bath tub by a binding screw, while the positive electrode is placed in the hands of the patient. The positive electrode is made of iron, and covered with wet wash-leather or cloth, to diminish the calorific action of the large-sized series of batteries necessary to run it. M. Pocy goes on to give a graphic description of the mode of its action. He says the current circulates through the patient from head to foot, thus traversing all the internal organs, not except- ing the bones, taking along with it every particle of metal which may exist in the organism ; then, by restoring the metal to its primitive form, and depositing* it over the whole surface of the sides of the bath tub from the neck to the feet, but always more abundantly over against that part of the body where the metal is supposed to exist. As an instance of this, M. Poey affirms that he once sawT from a patient who complained of pain in the arm, in consequence of having taken mercury, the exact size and shape of the arm depicted or elcctrotyped upon the side of the bath nearest that arm, from the deposit of the metallic mol- ecules which came out of the limb. He also affirmed that he had drawn from the femur and from the tibia of a patient a large quantity of mercury, which, according to some physicians, had actually existed in these bones for fifteen years ! But to deny that the electro-chemical bath is devoid of all effects on the human body, aside from the alleged extraction of metals, is but folly ; yet at the same time there are the strongest reasons for doubting its utility or safety, as it has been thus far tested. More than one instance has come under our own observation of the injurious consequences attending this unphil- osophical use of such galvanic power.