536 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ferent shades, as the begonia discolor, a kind of mutual exchange of 

 colors between the two surfaces has been noticed. 



II. 



The physiological phenomena just spoken of are usually confounded 

 in books with the facts of electric medical treatment, and it seems 

 better to distinguish the two classes. The true method consists in 

 first explaining the phenomena displayed in the healthy organism, as 

 the only way of understanding afterward those that are peculiar to 

 disorders. Electric treatment forms a group of methods to be classed 

 among the most efficacious in medicine, provided they are applied by 

 a practitioner well trained in the theory of his art. Indeed, the most 

 thorough physiological knowledge is essential for the physician who 

 would make the electric current serviceable. Mere experimenting, 

 even the most sagacious, must here be barren of good results a fact 

 of which it is well to remind those who impute to the method itself 

 the failures it meets with in unskilful hands. It is true that, since the 

 days of Galvani and Volta, physicians have used galvanism in the 

 treatment of many diseases. Early in the century, galvanic medicine 

 was much talked of, and supposed to be the universal panacea. Gal- 

 vanic societies, journals, and treatises, undertook to spread its useful- 

 ness. The fashion lasted a certain time, and would perhaps have 

 grown indifferent, when the discovery of induced electricity, due to 

 Faraday, in 1832, called professional attention once more to the vir- 

 tues of the electric fluid, and led to a new and interesting range of ex- 

 periments. Yet it is likely that the true systems of electric medical 

 treatment, after the extraordinary illusions of their earlier days had 

 vanished, would at length have sunk into disuse, had they not escaped 

 from the ruts of empiricism. With its usual boldness, it had at first 

 gained them a high rank, which it had no power to maintain. It was 

 experimental physiology, with its exact analysis of the mechanical 

 effects of this fluid upon the springs of the organism, which made its 

 application in the healing art sure, true, and solid, as it now is. In 

 this, as in all things, blind art has been the impulse to scientific re- 

 search, which in turn steadily enlightens and perfects art. 



It is singular that induction-currents have met with much better 

 fortune than galvanic ones. The latter, the use of which introduced 

 electric treatment, have gained real importance in physiology and 

 medicine only within a few years, and after the reputation of induc- 

 tion-currents was well established, thanks chiefly to the efforts of 

 Duchenne. A German physiologist and anatomist, Remak, who died 

 six years ago, was the first to urge the singular remedial virtues of the 

 voltaic current. Remak, after devoting twenty years to the study 

 of the most difficult questions in embryology and histology, un- 

 dertook, in 1854, the systematic examination and ascertainment of 

 the actidn of continuous currents on the vital economy. He soon 



