88 INDUCTION SHOCKS 
be done, but wherever the occasion exists for a high 
degree of accuracy in determining stimuli, secondary re- 
sistance and cathode surface must be taken into account. 
A Standard of Inductorium Construction Necessary. 
In connection with this discussion of the circumstances 
in which the factors of secondary resistance and cathode 
surface may be disregarded, we must not forget that the 
structure of the inductorium is interwoven with the 
factor of cathode surface (see p. 78), in such fashion 
that the latter cannot be left out of account without 
error unless the former has been provided for. This pro- 
vision is best made by adopting a standard of inducto- 
rium construction and using for quantitative purposes 
only instruments conforming reasonably to it. Thus we 
become at once independent of inductorium structure 
as a complicating factor, and are free to measure stimuli 
in many cases in the simpler manner discussed above. 
The desirability of having a standard of inductorium 
construction for physiological and clinical use was recog- 
nized fully thirty years ago. In an attempt to establish 
one the Paris Electrical Congress of 1881 resolved at its 
session of September 28th that the form of inductorium 
at that time in use in the University of Berlin should be 
adopted as the standard.* 
* See Lewandowski: Elektrodiagnostik und Elektrotherapie, Wien 
und Leipzig, 1887, S. 212. Also Hoorweg: Die medicinische Elektro- 
technik und ihre physikalischen Grundlagen, Leipzig, 1893, S. 128. 
