MEDICAL ELECTRICITY. 15 



Marianini has published a means for the useful application 

 of Electricity in the cure of some cases of paralysis and para- 

 plegia. He recommends that through the affected member 

 should be passed for many days and even for many weeks, not 

 a continued current, but rapidly successive Voltaic discharges, 

 at first feeble, but gradually increasing in power ; and he assures 

 his readers that he has succeeded in effecting many cures by 

 this means. 



Another individual, who has devoted much time to the study 

 of Medical Galvanism, has taken advantage of the calorific 

 effects of the Voltaic battery for the production of internal 

 moxas. It is known, doubtless, to most of our readers, that 

 the resistance offered to the Electrical current by some metals, 

 is such as to produce the ignition of the metals ; thus, for 

 example, if a thin piece of platina wire be placed between the 

 poles of a battery, it will become red or even white hot. The 

 plan of the writer to whom allusion is made, Doctor Fabre 

 Palaprat, is to introduce into the part which he wishes to 

 cauterize a thin platinum wire, connected with one of the poles 

 of a powerfully charged battery, while the other pole communi- 

 cates with the surface of the body : the electric current, when 

 sufficiently intense, renders the platinum wire red hot, and thus 

 destroys the organic tissues in contact with it ; at the end of a 

 few days a slough forms, which is easily removed. It is 

 needless to observe that such an operation must be performed 

 with extreme circumspection. 



In Italy, the medical application of Voltaic Electricity has 

 been studied in another point of view, and as there appears 

 much promise, in this theory, of arriving at certain general 

 and definite results in the therapeutical employment of Electricity, 

 we shall make no apology for speaking of it somewhat in 

 detail. 



Monsieur Orioli, one of the most distinguished philosophers 

 of whom Italy can boast, has published some theoretical con- 

 siderations concerning a new means of modifying the laws of 

 vitality, by changing the electrical state of living parts. These 

 considerations are based on theory alone, but as they are 



