It may be added that there is nothing magical, or by the touch, or
mysterious, in the treatment of disease by the electrical current. The
results depend upon intelligent applications, based upon reason and
experience, a varied treatment for varying cases. Nor is it a remedy to
be applied by the patient himself more than any other is. On the
contrary, he may do himself great injury. The pills, potions, powders
and patent medicines made to be taken indiscriminately, and which he
more or less understands, may be still harmful yet much safer. Even the
application of one or the other of the two poles with reference to the
course of a nerve, may result in injury instead of good.
INCOMPLETE POSSIBILITIES.--There are at least two things greatly desired
by mankind in the field of electrical science and not yet attained. One
of these, that may now be dismissed with a word, is the resolving of the
latent energy of, say a ton of coal, into electrical energy without the
use of the steam engine; without the intervention of any machine. For
electricity is not manufactured; not created by men in any case. It
exists, and is merely gathered, in a measure and to a certain extent
confined and controlled, and sent out as a _concentrated form of
energy_ on its various errands. Should a means for the concentration
of this universally diffused energy be found whereby it could be made to
gather, by the new arrangement of some natural law such as places it in
enormous quantities in the thundercloud, a revolution that would
permeate and visibly change all the affairs of men would take place,
since the industrial world is not a thing apart, but affects all men,
and all institutions, and all thought.
The other desideratum, more reasonable apparently, yet far from present
accomplishment, is a means of storing and carrying a supply of
electricity when it has been gathered by the means now used, or by any
means.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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