70 LOCALIZED ELECTRIZATION, 



the face. We have, therefore, good reason to say that faradic 

 electricity, which in no way alters the tissues, is essentially 

 medical electricity. 



It is when we wish to limit exactly the power of electricity upon 

 certain muscles or fasciculi, or upon individual nerves, that we 

 understand the value of faradism, and the need of employing those 

 induction instruments which unite all the properties that I have 

 been describing. 



I. — TJie historic question. 



Before proceeding to explain the method of localized faradiza- 

 tion, of which, whatever may be said by M. Becquerel, I deem 

 myself to be unquestionably the inventor, it is necessary to glance 

 at the historic question. 



From the time when the pile of Volta was first applied to electro- 

 physiological experiment, all the world has seen that rheophores, 

 placed upon the moist skin, over masses of muscle, called those 

 masses into contraction at the moment of completing or of 

 breakino- the circuit. No refinement of observation was needed in 

 order to establish this fact, which, moreover, was mentioned in the 

 accounts given of physiological experiments made with voltaic 

 currents, prior to the discovery of induced electricity. 



Still later, when induced currents were for the first time applied 

 to electro-physiological research, it would have been necessary to 

 be blind in order not to observe that the rheophores, when placed 

 upon moist skin, produced contraction of the muscles beneath, as 

 had long been known to be the case with intermittent galvanic 

 currents. 



At the time when I commenced my experimental researches 

 upon localized electrization, every one used moist rheophores in 

 order to provoke, by their application to the surface of the skin, 

 muscular contractions by means of any kind of battery or any 

 apparatus of induction. 



It was certainly not with such insufficient ideas, and by such 

 coarse methods, that I have been able to establish the method 

 that I have called localized electrization, and more especially 

 localized faradization. This method was only really created on 

 the day when I discovered the means of confining to the surface 

 of the skin the action of even the most intense induced currents ; 

 and when I had shown, by experiments upon mankind in a normal 

 state, as well as in certain pathological conditions, that it was 

 possible to make induced currents penetrate the skin without 

 exciting it, and to concentrate their action upon the organs 

 beneath. It had not really deserved the name of localized elec- 



