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Electricity and Galvanism, in their Physiological and Therapeutical 

 relations. By Dr. Golding Bird, F. R. S., Fellow of the 

 College, Assistant Physician to Guy's Hospital. 



More than twenty-three centuries have passed away since the 

 great father of physic, the " divine old man" of Cos, felt the necessity 

 for the adoption of some conventional terms by which he could ex- 

 press the influence under which the different phenomena, as well 

 of the macrocosm of the world at large as of the microcosm of man 

 himself, were developed. We are indebted to his ingenuity for the in- 

 vention of the hypothesis of a principle which is supposed to influence 

 all the manifestations of creative power observed in the universe. To 

 this he applied the name of (j>v<ng, viz. " nature." Hippocrates, 

 however, invested his (bvcrig with a kind of intelligence, under 

 which it was supposed to exert a tendency to promote all actions 

 which were beneficial, and repress those which were injurious, to the 

 well-being of man. He, indeed, seems to have regarded it a? a kind 

 of tutelary deity ; in which dark notion he appears to have been fol- 

 lowed by others, on whom a light had beamed which had not reached 

 the distant ages of the Coan sage, and thus leaves them without an 

 excuse for the adoption of such an opinion. We indeed know that — 



" Nature is but the name for an effect, 

 Whose cause is God !" — 



and in this light we profess to be investigators into its laws and pheno- 

 mena. The different sections into which such investigations have been 

 divided, have received the name of physical sciences, or sciences of 

 nature. Of these, the departments devoted to an investigation of the 

 structure and laws of the animal frame, in health and disease, become 

 the especial object of pursuit of the practitioner of the healing art. 

 If, however, his information be limited to such portions of knowledge 

 exclusively, it will indeed be scanty. He can never be expected to 

 extend the domains of the art he professes, or hope to add fresh ap- 

 pliances to the science of healing. " Medicina est ars conjecturalis" 

 was the remark uttered some eighteen centuries ago, and such must 

 ever be the case so long as the practitioner of medicine limits himself 

 to his own exclusive pursuits. The light such a man can hope to 



