How to Use a Galvanic Battery in Medicine and Surgery: A Discourse Delivered Before the Hunterian Society, Third Edition — John Shaqi
How to Use a Galvanic Battery in Medicine and Surgery: A Discourse Delivered Before the Hunterian Society, Third EditionTibbits, Herbert
Science
How to Use a Galvanic Battery in Medicine and Surgery: A Discourse Delivered Before the Hunterian Society, Third Edition
Tibbits, Herbert
Electrotherapeutics
There is another generalized application which has been much advocated,
and remarkable statements have been put forth, not only of its curative
power in almost every disease, but also of its purely physical and
chemical effects--I refer to that by “Electric Baths,” several
establishments of which exist in London, but you need not send your
patients to them. You can teach them how to take an electric bath in
their own bed or bath-room. A bath sufficiently large for the patient
to recline in it should be insulated by glass supports (four stout
tumblers will do very well), and filled with water at a temperature of
95 to 100 degrees. A metallic plate in connection with one pole may be
inserted at the head, and a second plate in connection with the other
pole at the foot of the bath. The patient should be protected from
direct contact with either plate by sitting upon a wooden framework.
With a sufficiently powerful current, a portion of the electricity
will pass through the body of the patient reclining thus between the
poles. Another method is to connect the water with one pole, and for
the patient to grasp in his unimmersed hands a copper bar covered with
wet flannel, and in connection with the second pole of the battery; or
a conductor from this second pole may be held almost, but not quite,
in contact with any part of the body immersed in the water. Either
the Voltaic or Faradaic current may be used. Ordinary water with the
Faradaic current, but salt and water, or acidulated water, with the
Voltaic.
[SN: General Faradization.]
Another more generalized application is that introduced by Beard and
Rockwell, under the name of “General Faradization.” The patient sits
with his naked feet upon a sheet of copper connected with one pole,
while the other pole is connected by a moistened sponge with the
left hand of the operator, who passes his disengaged hand, slightly
moistened, over the muscles of the patient, and sometimes over his
whole body. The current, I need hardly say, passes through the body of
the operator before it reaches the patient, and the sensation he feels
is his chief guide to its graduation.
[SN: Centralized Galvanization.]
Another general application is the “Centralized Galvanization” of the
same authors, in which their object is to bring the whole central
nervous system under the influence of the Voltaic current.
They place one pole--usually the negative--at the epigastrium and pass
a large moistened sponge from the positive pole over the forehead and
top of the head, along the inner border of the sterno-mastoid, from the
stylo-mastoid fossa to the sternum, and down the entire length of the
spine, from the nape of the neck to the sacrum. The brain, sympathetic
and spinal cord, and the pneumogastric nerves are thus submitted to the
influence of the current.
[SN: Localized Electrization.]
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