How to Use a Galvanic Battery in Medicine and Surgery / A Discourse Delivered Before the Hunterian Society, Third Edition (PDF)

Excerpt from Book:

This Discourse was first published in compliance with the request of several of those who heard it delivered, and who expressed to me an opinion that busy practitioners might perhaps be glad to have at hand, and in small compass, such information as it contained. It was obviously impossible to do more in so limited a time than to make a general reference to the therapeutic uses of electricity; and the most that I attempted in this direction was to recall to the recollection of my audience those conditions of disease in which the application of electricity would seem—without doubt—to be required; and to indicate the methods of application most generally useful. The construction of apparatus can not be understood from verbal or written description alone; and I appended to the text certain notes, and illustrations of the instruments which I submitted to the Society.

With the Second Edition I incorporated three Lectures which I delivered at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic; and to this Edition I have appended such additional matter as I believe will prove useful to the student.

I may add that I have endeavoured, as was said by a deceased physician, “to paint electro-therapeutics not imperfectly, but, as it were, in miniature:” and that while I have carefully revised every page, and have noticed all real improvements introduced to the profession since the First Edition, I have kept the book a small book: and I venture to hope a book easily to be understanded by the multitude of practitioners who ask daily what instruments to use, and when, and especially how, to use them.

These questions I have endeavoured to answer in the following pages, which contain such details, and such details only, as I believe it essential for the practitioner to master.