A TREATISE 



MEDICAL ELECTRICITY. 



CHAPTER I. 



HISTORY OF MEDICAL ELECTRICITY. 



They who first proposed the medical application of Electricity, 

 seemed to have entertained mistaken notions of the mode of its 

 action, and, consequently, to have erred in their calculation of 

 the effects which it was expected to produce. They conceived 

 that it was to operate as instantaneously upon disease, as it did 

 upon the sensations or muscular powers of the animal frame, 

 forgetting that there are very few cases in which a system of 

 depraved vital action can instantaneously be changed into a 

 healthy discharge of the functions of life. 



The first application of Electricity as an agent for the relief 

 of disease, must have been subsequent to the discovery of the 

 Leyden vial in the year 1745. The shock occasioned by this 

 instrument appeared at that period so tremendous, that the most 

 absurd accounts were related of it. Muschenbroek, in writing 

 to Reaumur on the subject, asserted that he would not receive 

 another such shock for the whole kingdom of France. The 

 impression was such, that respiration was affected, and two 

 days afterwards he had scarcely recovered from the emotion 

 and inconvenience. M. Allamand, on taking a shock, declared 

 " that he lost the use of his breath for some minutes, and then 

 felt so intense a pain along his right arm, that he feared pel- 



