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CHAPTER V. 



APPLICATION OF GALVANISM BATTERIES AND 

 THEIR USE ELECTRO-MAGNETISM MACHINES 

 AND THEIR USE MAGNETO-ELECTRICITY. 



The discharges of a galvanic battery and a Ley den jar produce 

 effects so analogous, as to render it probable that they affect the 

 living body in the same way, and that they may, therefore, be 

 indifferently applied as stimulants to the nervous system. The 

 voltaic pile, however, possesses many advantages which do not 

 belong to the electrical machine : the quantity of electricity it 

 sets in motion is vastly greater, a peculiarity which may probably 

 confer upon it a higher degree of medicinal power ; there is no 

 difficulty in bringing it into action in any kind of weather ; the 

 shocks it gives may be more exactly graduated, and admit of 

 being directed with facility to organs which it is difficult, if not 

 impossible, to subject to the influence of the common electric 

 spark ; as, for instance, in cases of deafness, gutta serena, amau- 

 rosis, and aphonia. 



Whenever galvanism is intended to produce an exciting effect, 

 is must be exhibited so as to produce shocks, or in the form of 

 the interrupted current. In asphyxia, for example, the chief 

 object is to restore the circulation of the blood and the respiratory 

 movements. The plan adopted by Dr. Ure, and which has 

 been found the most efficacious, consists in laying bare the 

 sheath which encloses the par vagum and great sympathetic 

 nerve, touching it with the wire connected with the positive pole 

 of a battery, and while one extremity of the negative wire 

 is pressed under the cartilage of the seventh rib, drawing the 

 other along the upper edges of the plates of the trough towards 

 its copper or silver end. This plan is very efficacious, and is 

 much more readily arranged than any contact-breaking apparatus. 

 In this way, a rapid succession of discharges, each succeeding 

 one of which exceeds the preceding one in intensity, is sent to 



