A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication Part 1

A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication.

by Daniel Clark.

PREFACE.

In the summer of 1866, the author of this little book, moved by the repeated and earnest solicitation of his Medical Cla.s.ses, prepared and printed a small pamphlet ent.i.tled _Practical Principles of Medical Electricity_, designed more particularly, as the present work also is, as a _Hand-Book_ to a.s.sist 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 grat.i.tude 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 pract.i.tioners 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 surpa.s.sed, if equalled, by any in the world.

D. C.

PLAINFIELD, ILL., June, 1869.

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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sures 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, a.s.sumes a belligerent att.i.tude 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 a.s.sert, 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 pract.i.tioners a debt of grat.i.tude which can never be paid. Their laborious and often perilous research in the fields of their profession, and their untiring a.s.siduity in the application of their science and skill to the relief of human suffering, ent.i.tle them to a degree of confidence and affectionate esteem which few other cla.s.ses 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 pract.i.tioner. 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 pract.i.tioners feel incert.i.tude 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 pract.i.tioners 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.

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 pract.i.tioner 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 pract.i.tioner 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 ma.s.s 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 a.s.sert, 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 gla.s.s bottle, intended to hold the battery fluid when not in use; a gla.s.s cup or jar, to serve as the battery cell; a pair of insulated metallic conducting cords; two tin electrodes; a bra.s.s 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 bra.s.s post, standing on the top of this bar and soldered to the platina plate below, be toward the left-hand side. Then take the bra.s.s clamp and place it across the top of these metallic plates, a little to the right of the bra.s.s 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 bra.s.s 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 bra.s.s 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 quant.i.ty 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 quant.i.ty 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_ quant.i.ty and intensity at the one extremity or pole of the magnetized body, and in _minimum_ quant.i.ty 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 quant.i.ty 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 ill.u.s.trated 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.