40 DISEASES RELIEVED BY ELECTRICITY. 



effect may be extended to the entire surface. With a powerful 

 battery, the effect resembles that which would be produced by a 

 solution of nitrate of silver, containing about five grains of the 

 salt to an ounce of water; and with a still more powerful battery, 

 such for example, as ten pair of Grove's, the action is much 

 more intense, and there is almost immediately formed an eschar 

 of very considerable thickness. M. Pravaz details several cases 

 in which this practice was resorted to in the cases of bites 

 inflicted by rabid animals, in one of which, the cauterization was 

 not had recourse to until fifty-four hours after the reception of the 

 bite: the eschar was usually detached on the eleventh day, and 

 the cicatrization completed on the seventeenth. 



To coagulate the blood tvithin an Aneurismal Tumour. On the 

 same principle as the former application of Galvanic Electricity, 

 viz. the coagulation of the animal fluids which contain 

 albumen, it has been suggested, that Galvanism might be 

 applied to the important purpose of coagulating the blood within 

 an aneurismal tumour, and thus removing the disease, without 

 resorting to the ligature. For this purpose, two needles are to 

 be introduced into the tumour, and their projecting extremities 

 connected with the poles of a Galvanic battery. Although this 

 proposition is ingenious, we are not aware of its having been 

 resorted to. 



There have been many other propositions in connection with 

 the therapeutic use of Voltaic Electricity. Indeed, there is 

 scarcely a disease, or form of disease, in which some attempt to 

 produce relief by Galvanism has not been made ; and it is this 

 empirical use of the remedy which contributes, to a great extent, 

 to throw discredit on an agent which both has and will effect 

 much good. We have, however, confined ourselves in this and 

 the preceding chapters, to those cases where, either from theory 

 we should be disposed to conceive that benefit might result 

 from its use, or where success has really -attended its exhibition. 

 To have related the cases themselves would have been impossible 

 within the limits we have prescribed to ourselves ; and we have 

 therefore been content to subjoin references to those works in 

 which they were originally reported. 



