If there is any one disease that more frequently than any other tempts
the physician to have recourse to empirical treatment, it surely is
hysteria. The obscurity, in many cases, of its etiology, as well as its
frequent obstinacy under the most diverse methods of treatment,
successively employed, are alone sufficient to warrant us in having
recourse to electricity, where this has not already been employed.
Where we can establish the etiology of a given case, we cannot of course
be in doubt as to the remedy; and in many instances of this kind we find
in electricity our most potent curative agent. But even where we are in
doubt or positively ignorant as to the origin of the symptoms, we are
justified in giving preference empirically to electricity, not only
because, the disease being essentially of a nervous character, we find
in electricity the most powerful of neurotics, but also because _recent_
statistics, those that embrace a period when electricity has been
permitted to participate, if not duly, at least more largely than
heretofore, in the treatment of disease, go to show that by means of
this remedy better average results have been obtained than with any
other. Again, where there are no positive indications to employ any
special method of electrization, either central or local, it appears
rational to give the preference to a method that is at the same time
central and peripheral, that admits of the application of either current
with the utmost facility, and is susceptible of so many modifications
that, with at best two or three tentative applications, it can be
suitably adapted to almost any given case. The results I have thus far
obtained justify me in asserting that, of the cases that are merely
functional in their nature, by far the greater majority will yield
completely to judicious electro-balneological treatment.
As to the mode of administration in this affection, I can suggest
nothing. There is so little uniformity in the manifestations of
hysteria, that it were idle to even attempt to establish anything like a
routine electro-balneological treatment. Each case must make its own
laws.
CASE VIII.* Mrs. A., aet. 28, married, sterile, from the
_clientele_ of Dr. KREMER, was referred to me on June 12th,
1874. She had been a sufferer from hysteria for a number of
years. Among the more prominent symptoms were intense
_pruritus_, transient flushing and heat of the entire surface,
with pricking sensations and headache. Six baths, in each of
which both currents were employed, sufficed to effect a complete
and permanent cure.
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