ELECTRICITY

IN ITS

RELATIONS TO PRACTICAL MEDICINE.

FIRST SECTION.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE APPLICATIONS OF ELECTRICITY IN

MEDICINE.

THE history of electro-therapeutics is the history of electricity. Every advance step in the field of the latter has been quickly followed by an endeavor, on the part of the medical profession, to turn the new discovery to practical account.

The history of electro-therapeutics may be divided into three periods. The first dates back some two thousand years into the dim past, beginning with our primitive knowledge of electricity, the electricity of the raja torpedo-for us a long and unfruitful period-and ends with the therapeutical use of the electrical machine and Leyden jar. The second is comprised within the years 1789, the date of the discovery of contact electricity, and 1831, the year in which induction electricity was discovered. The third extends from the latter date to the present day.

Of the first period only a few isolated facts are known. The ancients often ate of the flesh of the raja torpedo on

account of its curative properties. A thousand years ago, the native women of West Africa put their sick children into a hole filled with water, in which there were some of these fish. Scribonius Largus, a physician who lived at the time of the Emperor Tiberius, is known to have done something similar for the cure of gout. Pliny also mentions electricity as a remedy, and Dioscorides records an electrical cure of prolapsus ani. So much for the historical, or rather the mythical, data of this period.

It was not until the middle of the eighteenth centuryafter the discovery of the electric machine and of the Leyden jar—that modern practitioners began to experiment with the new remedy. Among these we have the Germans Kratzenstein, who used friction-electricity with success for a paralyzed finger, and De Haën, under whose direction experiments were made in the Vienna Hospital, and the Frenchmen Jallabert, Sigaud de la Fond, Bertholon, and finally, Mauduyt, who are especially worthy of notice. The lastnamed, by his masterly report to the Société Royale de Médecine, 1773, made his colleagues enthusiastic partisans of the new method of treatment. Thus manifold uses were made of electricity-as, electric baths, electric streams, electric inhalation, or electric sparks or shocks, in which latter a powerful irritant for impaired nervous sensibility was recognized. Cavallo collected the varied observations in his "Essay on the Theory and Practice of Medical Electricity," London, 1780. He found electricity efficacious in paralysis of the muscles, impaired vision or hearing, chorea, epilepsy, chronic rheumatism, scrofulous enlargement of the glands, tape-worm, and especially as a means of reanimating the apparently dead. Soon, however, after the failure of many a hope, and after the discovery of an incomparably more abundant source of electricity in galvanism, had attracted the attention of the learned world, they turned their backs on the electric machine and Leyden jar, in order to employ the new panacea with still more sanguine expectations.

Let us glance, for a moment, at the therapeutical applica tion of the magnet, which we could not well pass unnoticed. Although its power was not unknown to the ancients, it was not until the middle ages that the attention of the physician was particularly directed to it. Paracelsus, especially, recommended it "as a remedy which possessed such mysterious properties, that one, without it, could accomplish nothing, and, further, it was an agent so excellent in the hands of the medical inquirer, that none could be found, far or near, of which so much could be said." The results, however, were very insignificant so long as the feeble action of the loadstone only was at command; these were rendered more important about the middle of the last century by the preparation and use of artificial magnets, particularly by those of Maximilian Hell, of Vienna.

After Galvani, in 1789, discovered contact electricity, and had found that, by touching an exposed nerve or muscle with two connected metals, convulsive contractions are produced, which, however, immediately disappear, when the connection is broken, he concluded that there must be present in animals an electric fluid upon which all muscular action depends. To this fluid he gave the name Animal Electricity, and so, in appearance, prematurely made an assertion, the correctness of which, after long battling, has recently been recognized. Alexander Volta opposed this theory, and showed that the metals necessary to the production of this phenomenon must be heterogeneous; that it, on the contrary, was not necessary to bring the nerve and muscle into contact with both metals, but that the simultaneous contact of two points of a nerve or muscle was sufficient to produce the phenomenon. Through the construction of the pile that bears his name, he at the same time became the originator of the present system of galvanism and of the discoveries that are the pride of our century. But Volta, as well as Valli, still contended that the nerve-fluid was electric in its nature, and only by contact with different metals could.

be put in motion; while Reil, Gren, Fontana, and others, denied the existence of animal electricity, and saw in the electricity generated by different metals an irritant for the sensitive muscular fibres.

In 1797 Humboldt published his celebrated work,' ïn which he showed the power of galvanism to effect an immediate change in the secretions, studied the action of galvanism on the nerves and muscles, and demonstrated the dependence of nervous sensibility on external circumstances, such as muscular exertion, diseased conditions, etc., and thus gave to science the results of his experiments with a power which, since then, has played so important a part in physiology. In the mean time Valli proposed electricity as a test in cases of apparent death. Hufeland and Sömmering designated the phrenic nerve as the one best adapted to the use of galvanism as a means of resuscitation. Pfaff, Reil, Humboldt, and others, recommended contact electricity as especially efficacious in cases of paralysis of certain organs. Until now, however, the experiments had been made only with certain chain-connections. But when Volta's pile, constructed in 1800, attracted the more general attention of the profession with its magnificent revelations, Loder, in Jena, assisted by Bischoff and Lichtenstein, Grapengiesser and Hers, in Berlin, and the medical school under the direction of Haller, in Paris, resorted to it in cases of paralysis of the extremities and the nerves of sense. At the same time, Professor Schaub, in Cassel, and Eschke, director of the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb in Berlin, employed it in cases of impaired hearing and of deaf mutes; and Aldini and Bichat were the first to experiment on the bodies of those who had been executed (1802). In general, galvanism had greater difficulties to contend against in Italy and France than in Germany. Nevertheless, in Italy, according to the observations of Gentili and Palazzi, isolated cases of

1 Versuch über die gereizte Muskel- und Nervenfaser, etc. Band i.

melancholy were cured by the new remedy. It, however, frequently failed. This was due, in a great measure, to a want of discrimination on the part of the practitioner, to the incompleteness of the apparatus, and to other causes.

In consequence of these failures, the scientifically-educated physicians were slow to recognize galvanism as a therapeutical agent, and as a natural sequence, it fell into the hands. of charlatans, who hawked the pile of Volta in the marketplaces as a panacea for every imaginary ailing. With it they pretended to make the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the lame to walk. Mesmerism also-which made its appearance about this time, and spread rapidly through France and Germany, finding adherents even among physicians, Hufeland, Wolfart, Kluge, and others-contributed to deter the profession from studying electricity with the view of turning it to practical account, and to confuse the people in their conceptions of magnetism and electricity-so that, at last, mineral and animal magnetism, talismans, amulets, charms, and sympathetic cures were all placed in the same category. Thus faith was lost, not only in the miraculous, but also in the healing powers of electricity, and we have in this period only a few names to mention which are of any importance in its history. To these belong G. F. Most,' Sarlandière, who, by the adoption of acupuncture, rendered the action of electricity on the deeper organs possible, and Magendie, who, by the authority of his name, sustained the waning confidence in this remedy.

With Faraday's discovery of induction electricity began a new era in its application to medicine. In 1832 Pixii constructed the first magneto-electric rotary machine, to which, later, Saxton, Keil, Ettinghausen, and Stöhrer made important improvements. As the high price of this apparatus prevented its general use, Aldini, Neef, Wagener, Rauch, and others constructed cheaper Volta-electric machines,

Über die grossen Heilwirkungen des in unsern Tagen mit Unrecht vernachlässigten Galvanismus. Lüneburg, 1823.