THERAPEUTIC VALUE OF ELECTRO-PUNCTURE. 115 



agent, in the beginning of 1744; Two years later, in 1746, when 

 the effects of the Leyden jar (the strong discharges of which had 

 at first inspired great terror), had become familiar, Hermann Klyn 

 cured, by this instrument, a woman who had been two years 

 paralysed. After these observers came the Abb^ Nollet, Privata 

 of Venice, Sauvage, and Zindult, a Swedish physician, who used 

 the jar in the treatment of chorea in 1753.^ 



Medical electricity, unjustly abandoned some years after its birth, 

 had been taken up again with fresh ardour. Manduit was nomi- 

 nated reporter to a commission by the Eoyal Society of Medicine, 

 in order to determine the actual worth of electricity in paralysis. 

 Notwithstanding the brilliant report of this learned physicist, made 

 in 1773, and in which the cure of paralysis by electricity was 

 represented to be the rule ; notwitlistanding the works of the Abbd 

 Bertholon, in 1779, of Cavallo, in 1780, of James Larry, in 1800 ; 

 and notwithstanding a great number of treatises which were pub- 

 lished upon the subject in France, in England, in Germany, and 

 elsewhere, electricity was unable to bear the test of time. The 

 results obtained from it were not in accord with the hopes that 

 had been entertained by some ardent minds, and there followed a 

 period during which the agent suffered under disrepute. 



The discovery made by Galvani in 1789, and, soon afterwards, 

 the pile of Volta, afforded to medicine a new and precious source 

 of electricity ; of which numerous applications were made in 

 practice, especially in Germany, from 1797 to 1804. I shall 

 return to this as a matter of history, when treating of the applica- 

 tion of continuous currents. But, this time also, either that the 

 possibly exaggerated predictions of experimenters were not generally 

 realized in practice, or that the proper method of application was 

 not known, or that the instruments then in use were insufficient 

 or irregular in their action, or difScult and inconvenient of use, 

 galvanism was unable to preserve medical electricity from general 

 neglect. 



Such was the state of things existing in France, at the time 

 when Sarlandiere conceived the ingenious idea of using acupunc- 

 ture in order to direct and limit the power of electricity in the 

 deeper parts of the organism.^ This method, which supplemented 

 the weakness of the instruments by increasing the physiological 



2 We may even carry back medical [ creature is foimd ; and I have known an 

 electricity to times still more remote ; for inhabitant of Martinique who was cured 

 that of the torpedo was employed by the | of facial hemiplegia by the discharges of 

 ancients, even before Galen, as a remedy the torpedo. 



against a certain number of diseases. I ^ Sarlandiere, M^moires sur Velecfro- 

 Some physicians employ it even at the j puncture. Paris, 1825. 



present day in the countries where the 



I 2 



