1883.] • Recent Progress of Electricity . 
457 
IV. ON THE RECENT PROGRESS OF 
ELECTRICITY* 
By W. Fraser, M.R.C.S. 
N apology may be expected for my bringing before you 
a subjedl not stridtly medical, and I quite admit the 
validity of the objection. But, although Eledtricity 
has never been so far professionally recognised as to have a 
place in the Pharmacopoeia, we all know that it has long 
been employed, both as a diagnostic and a therapeutic agent, 
and that of late it has proved to be a valuable method 
of treatment in the hands of several eminent London 
physicians. 
We know, too, that in the present period of popular 
eledtric excitement, it is beginning to take a prominent place 
in the field of quackery, with plausible and high-sounding 
pretensions, and in such a way as will probably prove an 
obstacle to its employment in legitimate medicine. I do not 
think, however, that legitimate medicine will suffer much 
by the loss, for, whatsoever may be the influence that Elec- 
tricity has on the fundfions of the human body — and it is 
undoubtedly great, — this influence or these influences can 
best be brought into adtion through the judicious use of the 
old and ordinary means, whether pharmaceutic or psycho- 
logic, which the profession has long been accustomed to 
employ. 
I do not, therefore, intend to treat the subjedt specially in 
its medical aspedt, and shall, without further apology, bring 
it before you in the way that has happened to approve itself 
to me. You will not, I hope, take offence, if I ask you, 
during the reading of the Paper, to fancy yourselves in the 
position of a group of children, or of unsophisticated natives 
of the East, listening to one of their own story-tellers while 
he tries to please them for an hour, and to convey to them 
some pradtical and useful instrudtion by the scenes and 
sketches he places before their imagination. 
When the Allwise, Omnipotent, and Eternal created and 
organised this world, He placed in it certain Genii, immortal 
but soulless spirits, — His slaves, or ministers, as they might 
be called, to carry out His will in its government, and in 
* Read at the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Aberdeen, July 5, 1883. 
VOL. V. (THIRD SERIES). 2 H 
