38 LOCALIZED ELECTRIZATION. 



CHAPTER II. 



localized electrization. 



Part the First. 



The Fundamental Principles of the Method. 

 At the commencement of my researches, having adhered to the 

 principles of electrization given in special treatises, and my first 

 attempts having been, if not unfortunate, at least little encouraging, 

 I was soon convinced that my ill success might be attributed to 

 the imperfection of the operative proceedings until then in vogue, 

 and to which I had had recourse. Eeserving a critical examination 

 of them for the next chapter, I may say here that their greatest fault 

 is the difficulty of acting upon the diseased part without exposing 

 healthy organs, or even the entire nervous system, to the incon- 

 veniences or dangers of the electric stimulation. Moreover, it is 

 impossible, in using these methods, to attain to any exact study of 

 the muscular electro- physiology, or electro-pathology. 



It then suggested itself to me that it would be possible to obtain 

 more important and more definite results, if I could either arrest 

 electricity in the skin, without stimulating the subjacent organs, 

 or cause it to penetrate the skin without influencing it, and to 

 concentrate its power upon a nerve or a muscle ; in a word, to 

 make it penetrate to deeply-seated organs. 



§ I. Hoio to direct electricity through organs ? Sow to set limits 

 to its action ? 



This problem, so difficult in appearance, was very simple in 

 reality. For its solution nothing was needed beyond a careful 

 analysis of the phenomena daily seen in practice, on applying to 

 the moist or dry skin, the rheophores ^ of an induction-instrument 

 of medium power. The following are the principal facts that 

 enabled me to accomplish the work I had undertaken. They fur- 

 nish the basis of localized electrization. 



1. If the skin, and the metallic rheophores are perfectly dry, 

 and the cuticle of considerable thickness, as in persons who are 

 much exposed to weather by their occupation, the current is 

 recomposed on the surface of the epidermis, without reaching the 

 dermis, and produces sparks and crackling, but no physiological 

 phenomena. 



' [Conductors or directors. — if. T.] 



