Part 1

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A NEWLY DISCOVERED SYSTEM

ELECTRICAL MEDICATION.

BY DANIEL CLARK, A. M.

CINCINNATI: PRINTED BY HITCHCOCK AND WALDEN, FOR THE AUTHOR. 1875.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by

DANIEL CLARK, A. M.,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of Illinois.

Transcriber's Note:

Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Medical, scientific, archaic and variant spellings remain as printed, except for obvious errors noted at the end of the text. The oe ligature is shown as , whilst [->] represents a right-pointing index.

PREFACE.

In the summer of 1866, the author of this little book, moved by the repeated and earnest solicitation of his Medical Classes, prepared and printed a small pamphlet entitled Practical Principles of Medical Electricity, designed more particularly, as the present work also is, as a Hand-Book to assist the memory of those who have taken a regular course of LECTURES from himself, or from some other competent instructor in the same general system of Practice. The edition of that work was exhausted somewhat more than a year ago. Still, the book has continued to be frequently called for. The author has, therefore, prepared, and now offers to the Profession, the present volume, comprising the substance of the previous work--corrected, improved in arrangement and form, and about doubled in size by the introduction of new matter. While he has reason for gratitude that the former manual, referred to above, has met with so favorable a reception, he can not but hope that the present work will be found even more acceptable and valuable to both practitioners and their patients.

It is but justice to say that the most essential principles of practice here presented did not originate with the present author, but with PROF. C. H. BOLLES, of Philadelphia, their discoverer, from whom the writer received his first introduction to them. Yet, the explanations here given of the Law of Polarization, as respects the electric current in the circuit of the artificial machine, as well as respecting the natural magnets and magnetic currents of the human organism; the introduction of the long cord, with the explanation of its advantages; and also nearly everything of the philosophic theories here brought to view, the author alone is responsible for.

This work, like its little predecessor from the same pen, has been adapted exclusively to the use of DR. JEROME KIDDER'S Electro-Magnetic Machine, manufactured and sold, at present, at No. 544 Broadway, New York; because the author, having used in his own practice a considerable variety of the most popular machines intended for therapeutic purposes, and having examined several others, believes this to be incomparably the best in use. Dr. Kidder has, with most laudable zeal, pressed on his researches and improvements in the manufacture of these instruments, until there seems to be scarcely anything more in them to be desired. They are certainly not equalled by any others in America, and probably not surpassed, if equalled, by any in the world.

D. C. PLAINFIELD, ILL., June, 1869.

CONTENTS.

Page. INTRODUCTION xi

FIRST PRINCIPLES.

DR. JEROME KIDDER'S ELECTRO-MAGNETIC MACHINE 21 POLARIZATION 26 THE ELECTRIC CIRCUIT 28 POLARIZATION OF THE CIRCUIT 29 THE CENTRAL POINT OF THE CIRCUIT 33 THE CURRENT 35 MODIFICATIONS OF ELECTRICITY 36 THE VITAL FORCES--ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE 37 EXTENT OF ELECTRIC AGENCY 42 THEORY OF MAN 44 THE LOWER ANIMALS 54 THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM 56 NATURAL POLARIZATION OF MAN'S PHYSICAL ORGANISM 56 ELECTRICAL CLASSIFICATION OF DISEASES 58 PHILOSOPHY OF DISEASE AND CURE 58

PRINCIPLES OF PRACTICE.

POLAR ANTAGONISM 61 IMPORTANCE OF NOTING THE CENTRAL POINT 62 DISTINCTIVE USE OF EACH POLE 63 USE OF THE LONG CORD 69 THE INWARD AND THE OUTWARD CURRENT 74 MECHANICAL EFFECT OF EACH POLE 75 RELAXED AND ATROPHIED CONDITIONS 77 GENERAL DIRECTION OF THE CURRENT 78 TREATING WITH ELECTROLYTIC CURRENTS 79 POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE MANIFESTATIONS 81 HEALING 84 DIAGNOSIS 84

PRESCRIPTIONS.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS 94 GENERAL TONIC TREATMENT 95 COMMON COLDS 98 CEPHALAGIA (Headache) 100 DEAFNESS 102 NOISES IN THE HEAD 103 INFLAMED EYES 103 AMAUROSIS 104 STRABISMUS (Discordance of the Eyes) 104 CATARRH (Acute) 105 CATARRH (Chronic) 105 DIPHTHERIA 106 APHONIA (Loss of Voice) 106 CROUP 107 ASTHMA 108 HEPATIZATION OF LUNGS 108 PNEUMONIA 108 PULMONARY PHTHISIS (Consumption) 109 NEURALGIA AND RHEUMATISM OF THE HEART 111 ENLARGEMENT AND OSSIFICATION OF THE HEART 112 PALPITATION OF THE HEART 112 TORPID LIVER 112 HEPATITIS (Inflammation of Liver) 113 ENLARGEMENT OF LIVER 113 BILIARY CALCULI (Gravel in Liver) 114 INTERMITTENT FEVER (Ague and Fever) 114 NEPHRITIS (Inflammation of Kidneys) 115 RENAL CALCULI (Gravel in the Kidneys) 116 DIABETES (A Kidney Disease) 116 DYSPEPSIA 117 ACUTE DIARRHA 119 CHRONIC DIARRHA 119 CHOLIC (of whatever kind) 120 CHOLERA MORBUS 120 CHOLERA (Malignant) 121 DYSENTERY 122 CONSTIPATION OF BOWELS 122 HAEMORRHOIDS (Piles) 123 RHEUMATISM (Acute Inflammatory) 124 RHEUMATISM (Chronic) 125 DROPSY 126 NEURALGIA 126 SCIATICA 127 PARALYSIS 128 ERYSIPELAS 129 ERUPTIVE CUTANEOUS DISEASES 130 COMMON CRAMP 131 TRISMUS (Lockjaw) 132 TETANUS 132 CANCERS 133 ASPHYXIA (Suspended Animation) 134 RECENT WOUNDS, CONTUSIONS AND BURNS 135 OLD ULCERS 135 HEMORRHAGE 136 CHLOROSIS (Green Sickness) 136 AMENORRHA (Suppressed Menstruation) 138 DYSMENORRHA (Painful Menstruation) 138 MENORRHAGIA (Excessive Menstruation) 139 PROLAPSUS UTERI (Falling of the Womb) 140 LEUCORRHA (Whites) 140 SPERMATORRHA 141 IMPOTENCE 142

INTRODUCTION.

Considerable parts of this book have been written for the unlearned. For the scholarly reader such parts, of course, would be wholly superfluous; yet it is hoped that they to whom these are familiar will be patient in passing through them for the sake of others to whom they may be instructive. Other parts, again, it is believed, will be found new to the most of even educated minds. But men of the largest intellectual attainments are commonly the most docile. Such men, meeting this little work, will not shrink from a candid examination of its contents merely on account of their comparative novelty, nor because the views expressed differ essentially from those usually held by the medical faculty. The candid, yet critical, attention of such gentlemen, the author especially solicits. He assures them that he does not write at random, but from careful research and practical experience. His philosophic theories he offers only for what they are worth. His principles of practice he believes to be scientifically correct and of great value.

Let it not be supposed that the author, in this work, assumes a belligerent attitude towards the members of the medical profession. Although anxious to modify and elevate their estimate of electricity as a remedial agent, and to improve their methods of using it, he has no sympathy with those who profess to believe, and who assert, that medicines of the apothecary never effect the cure of disease; that where they are thought to cure, they simply do not kill; and who contend that the patient would have recovered quicker and better to have taken no medicine at all. He knows that such allegations are false, as they are extravagant; and so does every candid and unprejudiced observer whose experience has given him ordinary opportunities to judge. The writer believes it can be perfectly demonstrated that the advancement of medical science in modern times--say within the last two or three hundred years--has served to essentially prolong the average term of human life. The world owes to medical instructors and practitioners a debt of gratitude which can never be paid. Their laborious and often perilous research in the fields of their profession, and their untiring assiduity in the application of their science and skill to the relief of human suffering, entitle them to a degree of confidence and affectionate esteem which few other classes of public servants can rightly claim. For one, the author of this little book most sincerely concedes to them, as a body, his confidence, his sympathy, and his grateful respect. And the most that he is willing to say to their discredit, (if it be so construed), is that he regards them as having not yet attained perfection in their high profession, and as not being generally as willing as they should be to examine fairly into the alleged merits of remedial agents and improved principles of practice, (claimed to be such), when brought forward by intelligent, cultivated and respectable men, outside of "the regular profession." This is said at the same time that the author gives much weight to their commonly offered defense, viz: that, in the midst of professional engagements, they have not always the time to spare for such examination; and that, since the most of alleged improvements in the healing art, particularly of those introduced by persons who have not received a regular medical education, sooner or later prove themselves to be worthless, the presumption--though not the certainty--is, whenever a new agent, or a new method or principle is proposed by an "outsider," that this, too, if not willful charlatanism, is a mistake; and therefore, the sooner it comes to an end the better it will be for the public health, and that neglect is the surest way to kill it.

But the medical faculty have too widely employed electricity in the treatment of disease, and that with too frequent success, to admit of its being denied a place among important therapeutic agents by any respectable practitioner. The only questions concerning it now are those which relate to the versatility of its power, the scope of its useful applicability, and the principles which should guide in the administration of it. The general subject embraced in these questions is one in which suffering humanity has a right to claim that physicians shall be at home.

And yet it will scarcely be denied that, in the exhibition of electricity, more than of almost any other therapeutic agent, medical practitioners feel incertitude as to what shall be its effect. Now and then it acts as they expected it to do; sometimes it pleasantly surprises them; oftener it offensively disappoints them. They find it unreliable. Of other remedial agents, they commonly know, before administering them, what sort of effect will be produced; but in employing this, while they have hope, they are generally more or less in doubt. They regard it as a stimulant; although its action on the living organism appears to them to be largely veiled in mystery. In many cases of disease, particularly those of acutely inflammatory or febrile character, they judge it to be not at all indicated. To administer it in a case of bilious or typhoid fever, or in a case of pneumonia, pleuritis, gastritis, inflammatory rheumatism, or acute, and especially epidemic or malignant dysentery, or in a case of pulmonary phthisis, would probably be viewed by the most of physicians as the rashest empiricism, if not the next thing to madness. The idea of producing antagonistic effects with it at will, they would, for the most part, esteem preposterous. Rather, perhaps, it may be said of the majority of medical practitioners that such an idea has never entered their minds; so foreign is it to their conceptions of truth and propriety. But, at whatever risk of discredit or censure, the writer of the present volume avers that this idea is both scientifically sound and of every day's practical verification. The various and opposite forms of disease--acute and chronic, hypersthenic and asthenic--are habitually treated and cured, in his own practice and that of his students, by electricity alone.