1884.] On Electricity and its Present Applications. 
327 
II. ON ELECTRICITY AND ITS PRESENT 
APPLICATIONS.* 
By W. Fraser, A.M., M.R.C.S. Eng. 
J LT is right to mention that this paper — or rather the 
^ nucleus of it — has been already read to a Medical 
Society and to an Ecclesiastical Guild, a statement 
you will readily believe from some passages in it — entrees, I 
may say, in the entertainment — specially provided for the 
tastes of these guests. But now that I have ventured, 
though with fear and misgiving, to bring it before an 
audience of philosophers, who are quite competent to deal 
with the subject, I have added a few pieces de resistance, 
which may help to secure your attention, and afford some- 
thing to eat up and masticate, whether you think fit to 
swallow and assimilate them or not. 
An apology may be expedited for my bringing before a 
Medical Society a subject not stridtly medical, and I quite 
admit the validity of the objection. But although eledtri- 
city 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 therapeutic 
agent, and that of late it has proved a valuable method of 
treatment (particularly in nervous diseases) in the hands of 
several eminent London physicians. 
We know, too, that in the present period of popular ex- 
citement it is beginning to take a prominent place in the 
field of quackery, with plausible and high-sounding preten- 
sions, 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 Eledtricity 
has in regard to the functions 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, — adting as these do, through the nervous or eledtric 
functions of the body itself, — which the profession has long 
been accustomed to employ. 
* Read at the Aberdeen Philosophical Society, February 5th, 1884. 
