If not as immediately perceptible, the stimulant and permanent tonic and invigorating influences on the sexual organs are not much less constant than the corresponding influences on digestion. Careful observation, however, of a considerable number of cases where the sexual function was more or less impaired, has convinced me that while there can be no doubt that _direct_ influence on the innervation, tone and nutrition of the respective parts as well as the stimulus which the electric current furnishes to the seminal secretion, bear a share in the improvement that takes place, permanent beneficial results must be looked upon as chiefly the expression of improved nutrition and tonization of the system at large. I do not mean to be understood as wishing to put in negation the beneficial results that the local influence of electricity is capable of sometimes accomplishing in the sexual sphere. These results, however, are not of a physiological, but rather of a purely therapeutic nature, and are obtained there only where local morbid conditions exist. Now, in the great majority of the cases that have come under my observation, the causes of deterioration of the sexual capacity, though frequently obscure and indefinable, were certainly not local, but to be sought for in the general—most probably the nervous—system. In none but perhaps the very mildest and recent cases have I ever seen _rapid_ results follow electrical treatment of any kind whatsoever. In support of my assertion however that in the majority of cases the sexual sphere can be influenced only through the system at large, I will state _first_, that I have seen cases where local electrical treatment had utterly failed to do the slightest good, respond favorably to the baths, and _second_, that where success was met with, it was only after persistent treatment, continued long enough to modify favorably the condition of the entire organism, and through this the objective sphere. The stimulant and tonic effects under consideration, although shared to some extent by other methods of electrization, are here far more comprehensive and pronounced, a fact which is not surprising, when we reflect that in the electric bath not only are all the organs _indirectly_ influenced through stimulation of the nervous centres, but each separate organ is at the same time _directly_ acted upon by the current. A direct sequence of the stimulant and tonic effects of the electric bath is its SEDATIVE INFLUENCE. This sedative effect, whereof the hypnotic effect already spoken of is the supreme manifestation, must not be associated for a moment with any idea of depression, for here we have none such. In addition to what I have already said in endeavoring to account for the hypnotic influence of the baths, I refer the reader for further information to the admirable and lucid remarks on this subject by BEARD and ROCKWELL.[8]