2 6 
Dr. Wilson Philip on the effects of galvanism 
wire generally excites the strongest sensation. Some patients 
thought, that the relief was most speedy, when it was applied 
near the pit of the stomach. 
The galvanism was discontinued, as soon as the patient 
said that his breathing was easy. In the first cases in which I 
used it, I sometimes prolonged its application for a quarter of 
an hour, or twenty minutes, after the patient said he was 
perfectly relieved, in the hope of preventing the early recur- 
rence of the dyspnoea ; but I did not find that it had this effect. 
It is remarkable, that in several who had laboured under asth- 
matic breathing for from ten to twenty years, it gave relief 
quite as readily as in more recent cases; which seems to prove, 
that the habitual difficulty of breathing, even in the most 
protracted cases, is not to be ascribed to any permanent change 
having taken place in the lungs. 
With regard to that form of asthma which returns in violent 
paroxysms, with intervals of perfectly free breathing, I should 
expect little advantage from galvanism in it, because, as I 
have just observed, I found that the peculiar difficulty of 
breathing, which occurs in this species of asthma, cannot be 
induced in animals, except by means lessening the aperture 
of the glottis. It is probable, that in the human subject the 
cause producing this effect is spasm, from which indeed the 
disease takes its name, and we have no reason to believe, from 
what we know of the nature of galvanism, that it will be 
found a means of relaxing spasm. 
The spasmodic asthma is fortunately a very rare disease, 
so much so, that but one case of it has occurred to me since 
I have employed galvanism in asthma, while I have had an 
opportunity of employing this remedy in between thirty and 
