Dr. G. Betton Massey, author of “Electricity in the Diseases of Women,” asks and answers this question in the following manner: “What can be therapeutically accomplished when the seat of the disease is necessarily situated beyond the direct reach of the electrode? An answer drawn from both neurological and gynecological experience is that much can be accomplished; and this is doubtless due, in the first place, to the influence upon nutrition of the chemical changes that occur throughout the circuit, in the onward progress of the particles that appear free finally at the poles to the influence upon nutrition of the circulatory changes that result from vasomotor stimulation, and to the contractions produced in unstriated muscular tissue by heavy currents even at a distance. These results of quiet current transmission are governed in magnitude at a given spot by the _density_ of the current at the situation and by the _duration_ of the application. To accomplish much in the more distant parts of this region considerable strength must be employed, hence a delicate judgment is demanded in the selection of the size of the active pole to avoid cauterization on the one hand, and too great a diffusion on the other.” To within a comparatively recent period, the methods of applying the electric current for the removal of abnormal growths have been somewhat crude if not dangerous. It appears that formerly altogether too much stress or weight was laid on the chemical or electrolytic effects that the electrodes wrought in the tissues, and very little or no credit was given to the _passive_ current of galvanism as it traversed the tissues from pole to pole. Dr. Ephraim Cutter, of New York, advocated the so-called electro-puncture, and in the galvanic treatment of fibroid tumors of the uterus, these punctures were made through the abdominal walls. The electrodes for this purpose were stiletto shaped, with blades five inches long and three-eighths of an inch at their widest part; these were inserted into the tumor from opposite points. Wounds that were thus inflicted, necessarily involved more or less danger, and, although Dr. Cutter reported a great number of cures, the percentage of mishaps was too great to make electrical treatment popular among the profession.