Part 2

But "cui bono?" may be asked. "What if it be true that these things can be done with electricity? They are also done with medicines, which are more quickly and conveniently administered, and usually less annoying to the patient. What, therefore, is the practical utility of your electric system above the ordinary practice, especially if we include, in the latter, electrical treatment as occasionally employed by the most of respectable physicians?"

This is the important question--that to which the author desires to call particular attention. He, therefore, answers:

First.--It is manifestly true that the most of diseases, (the exceptions are comparatively few), can be cured by the use of medicines. It is also true that these can generally be administered with more convenience and less expenditure of time to the practitioner than electricity; and this is a great advantage. The author is often asked if he thinks his electric system will ever supersede the use of medicines. His answer is uniformly, "No." It takes too much time for that. Where the population is crowded, as in cities and large towns, it is often the case, especially in times of prevailing epidemic, that a physician can prescribe medicine for half a dozen or more patients in the time required to treat one electrically. To reject medicines and rely alone on electricity would, in periods and places of prevailing sickness, leave many sufferers without professional service, or would require that the proportion of doctors to the whole population should be largely increased--a thing certainly not often to be desired. So much, candor must concede.

Second.--It is not quite true that medicines are usually less annoying to the patient than electricity as we use it. As administered by others, it is often nearly intolerable. In our hands, on the contrary, it seldom inflicts any pain or distress, and almost invariably becomes agreeable to the patient after a very few applications. We have no occasion to torture our patients in order to cure them. But the cases are comparatively rare where medicines are not offensive; commonly they are excessively so.

Third.--In not a few diseases, and these among the most dangerous or distressful, the electric current, employed according to the system here taught, is able to reach, control and cure, with facility, where medicines are but slowly, and in most instances imperfectly successful, or fail altogether. This is said, or meant to be said, not invidiously nor boastingly, but in the candid utterance of a great and practically demonstrated truth. It is, perhaps, most often exemplified in neuralgic, rheumatic and paralytic affections. The author is happy to acknowledge that these diseases are frequently mitigated, and occasionally cured, by means of electrical treatment administered by those who know nothing of the system here taught. But the important fact is, in their hands there is no certainty as to the effect before trial. Under this system, the kind of effect is as certainly known before as after the trial, since it can be made one thing or another at will.

Cases are not unfrequently presented of inflammatory action, more especially where it is internal--traumatic cases and others--which the practitioner finds it impossible to subdue with medicine. But, with a proper knowledge of the system herein taught, he has at his command a power with which he can control such cases with almost infallible certainty, provided he can get access to them within reasonable time. The same may be said of fevers, particularly those occasioned by miasmatic or infectious virus. These are often difficult to manage by the use of medicine, and not seldom prove fatal, in spite of the best talent and skill which the profession can afford. But the electric current, rightly selected and scientifically applied, destroys or neutralizes the virus and restores the normal polarization, and so effects a cure.

Neuralgic affections are frequently found difficult, or even impossible, to be cured by means of medicines, and yet, in the very same cases, these affections yield and disappear with comparative facility when brought under the electric current, judiciously applied, according to the principles of this new system.

Chronic cases, and others of an asthenic character, are often very stubborn under the medicines of pharmacy, and are commonly the dread of physicians; yet, under scientific treatment by electricity, they rarely fail to lose their formidable character and to become obedient to the remedial agent.

Fourth.--In enumerating a few of the peculiar advantages of this system, I should add that it corrects the usual electric practice of the profession, so far as they become acquainted with it. As before intimated, the mass of physicians at present, who treat more or less electrically, do so with no knowledge, or next to none, of the great versatility of action of which the electric current is capable. They know nothing of the electrical polarization of the living organism in health, nor how it is variously affected in disease. The particular electrical state of the diseased organs is a matter foreign to their minds. They appear to suppose the point to be immediately aimed at as a means of cure is to get the electricity from the machine into the affected part or parts; whereas it should be to change, by correction, the polarization of the part or parts; and, if there be virus present, to neutralize that. Equally unacquainted are they generally with the diverse physiological action of the several modifications of the electric force--galvanism, magnetism, faradism, and frictional electricity. This, in their candor, they commonly acknowledge. And, for the most part, they are little or nothing better acquainted with the distinctive effects on the system of the positive and negative poles of the instrument. There is, therefore, plainly no science in their electrical practice. Every thing is done at random--all is empirical.

But the system here taught opens the light upon all of these points. For practical purposes, at least, it is, in its essential features, the only system of electrical therapeutics which has in it any real merit--the only system which can be true. By this, the writer does not mean to assert, or to imply, that the little book now before the reader contains no error, either in respect to theory or practice. In this early stage of our system's history, it would be remarkable if it did not contain errors in both these respects. But what it is intended to affirm is, that the book presents the cardinal features of a true, and the only possibly true, system of electrical practice. All possibly true systems of geometry must necessarily be essentially the same; and so, too, all possibly true systems of electrical medication must be essentially one. That one system, it is candidly and confidently believed, is briefly contained in the present little volume.

ELECTRICAL MEDICATION.

FIRST PRINCIPLES.

DR. JEROME KIDDER'S ELECTRO-MAGNETIC MACHINE.

On opening the machine-box, as it comes from the manufacturer, there will be found a glass bottle, intended to hold the battery fluid when not in use; a glass cup or jar, to serve as the battery cell; a pair of insulated metallic conducting cords; two tin electrodes; a brass clamp; and, under the helix-box, (which raise), the battery metals and two connecting wires to unite the battery with the helix.

To put the machine in working condition--ready for use--proceed, step by step, as follows, viz: Prepare the Battery Fluid by mixing twelve parts, by measure, of water with one part of sulphuric acid, (good commercial acid is pure enough), sufficient to fill the cell two-thirds or three-fourths full, and place in it about one-third of an ounce of quicksilver.

Next, place the platina plate between the two zinc plates, standing on their legs upon a table before you; and bring the top of the wooden bar (in a groove of which the platina is set) up flush with the top of the zinc plates. Let the brass post, standing on the top of this bar and soldered to the platina plate below, be toward the left-hand side. Then take the brass clamp and place it across the top of these metallic plates, a little to the right of the brass post, or about midway between the right and left sides, having its thumb-screw towards you, and with it screw the three plates firmly together. The platina is shorter than the zincs, to prevent its reaching the quicksilver in the bottom of the cell; and the wax balls on its sides are to insulate it from the zinc plates. This platina should never be allowed to touch the mercury or the zinc.

Let the plates, properly screwed together, be now placed in the cell with the Battery Fluid. Then, with the two copper connecting-wires, connect the post which stands on the wooden bar above the platina with the post stamped P on the helix-box, and the brass clamp N with the post N on the helix-box.

If, now, the screws regulating the vibrating armature be in perfect adjustment, the current will commence to run, with a buzzing sound; or it may be made to start by touching the hammer-like head of the flat steel spring. If not, the screws may be rightly adjusted in the following way: The top screw, which at its lower point is tipped with a small coil of platina wire, should be made to press delicately upon the center of the little iron plate on the upper side of the spring, so as to bear the latter down very slightly. Then raise or depress the screw-magnet, which turns up or down under the hammer, like the seat of a piano-stool, until the vibration of the spring commences. The rapidity of the vibrations, by which is secured the alternate closing and breaking of the electric circuit (or rather what, in practical effect, is equivalent to this--the direct and reverse action of the current in alternation) is increased by raising the screw-magnet and diminished by lowering it. When it is raised above what is required for ordinary use, the noise becomes too loud and harsh for many nervous patients to bear. It should then be depressed a little.

With respect to curative power, I have discovered but little perceptible difference, produced by the various degrees of rapidity in the vibrations, effected within the range of this magnet.

The force of the current is regulated by means of a tubular magnet, which slides over the helix, and is called the plunger. It is approached under a brass cap at the right-hand end of the machine. The plunger is withdrawn, more or less, to increase the force; pushed in to diminish it. If in any case the current can not be softened sufficiently with the plunger, the quantity of battery fluid in use must be made less.

After a time the current will become weak, and fail to run well. Then renew the battery fluid. When the quicksilver is all taken up by the zinc plates, the machine may be run for a while without adding more. But after it has considerably disappeared from the inside surface of the zinc plates, the latter will begin to show more rapid corrosion, while the current will be less. Then let a small quantity of quicksilver--one-fourth to one-third of an ounce--again be placed in the fluid.

When the machine is not in use, let the metals be removed from the fluid; and, if not to be soon again used, let them be rinsed with water, carefully avoiding to wet the wooden bar in which the platina is set.

The posts, with which the conducting-cords are to be connected, are arranged in a row near the front of the helix-box, and are marked A, B, C, D. Either two of these posts may be used to obtain a current; and since they admit of six varying combinations, six different currents are afforded by the machine, viz: the A B current, the A C current, the A D current, the B C current, the B D current, and the C D current. Whichever current is used, it may always be known which of the two posts employed is the positive and which the negative, by observing the letters stamped upon their tops. The one whose letter comes first in the order of the alphabet is positive; the other is negative. Also, the one standing towards the left hand is positive, and that at the right hand is negative. The qualities of the several currents are stated in a descriptive paper on the inside of the lid of the machine, which see. It will there be found that three of the currents--viz, the A B, the A C and the A D currents--are electrolytic: that is, dissolving by electric action. These electrolytic currents require to be used--one or another of them--whenever any chemical action is needed; as, in decomposing or neutralizing virus in the system, destroying cancers, reducing glands when chronically enlarged, removing tumors or other abnormal growths, and in treating old ulcers and chronic irritation of mucous membranes. The other three, being Faradaic or induction currents, and having no perceptibly chemical action, are used where only change of electro-vital polarization is required. These Faradaic currents differ from each other in respect to being concentrative or diffusive in their effects, and in their sensational force. B C is concentrative and delicately sensational. C D is also concentrative, though less so than B C, and is more strongly sensational. B D is diffusive, and the most energetically sensational of the three.

POLARIZATION.

It may be proper, in this place, to spend a few words upon electrical polarization in general.

Electrical polarity may be defined as a characteristic of the electric or magnetic fluid, by virtue of which its opposite qualities, as those of attraction and repulsion towards the same object, are manifested in opposite parts of the electric or magnetic body. These opposite parts are called the poles of the body, as the positive and negative poles. The difference between the positive and negative poles is believed to be that of plus and minus--plus being positive and minus negative. This is the Franklinian view, and, if I mistake not, is the one most in favor with men of science at the present day. This view supposes that the electricity or magnetism arranges itself in maximum quantity and intensity at the one extremity or pole of the magnetized body, and in minimum quantity and intensity at the opposite extremity or pole; and that, between these points--the maximum and the minimum--the fluid is distributed, in respect to quantity and intensity, upon a scale of regular graduation from the one to the other. The idea may be represented by a line, commencing in a point at the one end, and extending, with regularly increasing breadth, to the other end. The larger end would represent the positive pole, and the smaller, the negative pole. Or perhaps a better representation of the magnet would be a line of equal breadth from end to end, but having the one end white, or slightly tinted, say, with red, and the color gradually and regularly increasing in strength to the other end, where it becomes a deep scarlet. Let the coloring-matter represent the magnetism in the body charged, and we have the magnet illustrated in its polarization: the deep-red end is the positive pole, and the white or faintly-colored end is the negative pole.

It is a law of polarization that the positive poles of different magnets repel each other, and the negative poles repel each other; while positive and negative poles attract each other. The same law of polarization rules in electric or magnetic currents as in magnets at rest.

THE ELECTRIC CIRCUIT.