Skip to content Skip to sidebar Skip to footer

(Download) "How to Use a Galvanic Battery in Medicine and Surgery" by Herbert Tibbits " eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free

How to Use a Galvanic Battery in Medicine and Surgery

📘 Read Now     📥 Download


eBook details

  • Title: How to Use a Galvanic Battery in Medicine and Surgery
  • Author : Herbert Tibbits
  • Release Date : January 19, 2019
  • Genre: Medical,Books,Professional & Technical,
  • Pages : * pages
  • Size : 6750 KB

Description

Mr. President and Gentlemen,

Preliminary Remarks.

When your Council did me the honour to ask me to bring before you the subject of Electro-therapeutics, I felt that the invitation was addressed rather to the Hospital to which I am attached than to myself, seeing that to it belongs the merit of having been for some years the pioneer and outpost, so to say, in this metropolis of the scientific and methodical application of electricity to the alleviation and removal of disease; and that we are indebted to one of its distinguished physicians for a remarkable investigation into animal electricity, and the demonstration that much of what we have been accustomed to attribute to a “vital principle” may, in reality, be the effect only

[2]

 of electrical charge and discharge[1] (a valuable contribution to the correlation of the Physical Forces); and to my predecessor for the discovery of the special influence of voltaic currents in certain forms of paralysis.[2]

As it is one of our objects in our practice here to study the scope and the limits of electricity as a remedy in disease, it seemed to me not inappropriate to devote my first Lectures to electro-therapeutics; and the more so, as few medical men have a practical knowledge of the subject; and I fear that the profession generally, through lacking this practical knowledge, are to some extent responsible for the utter and astounding recklessness with which the laity—ever ready to rush in where physicians fear to tread—are prone to apply painful and dangerous electrization, not to themselves, but to their suffering friends; while it is still too common for the medical practitioner (as quoted by Golding Bird upwards of forty years ago) to consider that when his fiat has gone forth “let the patient be electrified,” he has done all that is necessary, while the patient usually carries out this mandate by the purchase of a rotary

[3]

magneto-electric machine, and by using it according to the directions of its maker, who is generally about as well fitted to teach its application in disease as is the maker of an amputating knife to operate with it!

The almost complete absence in the medical schools of the great hospitals of opportunities for an adequate study of electro-therapeutics, the importance of the subject, and the widespread attention that it is awakening throughout the profession, have also determined me to sketch as briefly as is consistent with clearness the present position of the science and practice of medical electricity, and especially of its practice.[3]

Electricity, Gentlemen, is by no means one of those remedies that, failing to do good, is little likely to do harm. On the contrary, in injudicious hands, it is potent for evil, while the benefit to be derived from it is in exact proportion to the judgment and care with which it is administered. Moreover, the results of its employment are dependent, more than with any other therapeutic agency, upon the methods by which it is applied—methods that should be familiar, not alone to a few specialists, but to every practitioner.

[4]

Addressing you who are engaged in active practice, with little time to devote to medical electricity, it will, I think, be more acceptable for me not to weary you with a tedious discourse upon the elementary principles of electricity, for the practical application of these matters concerns rather the instrument-maker than the medical practitioner, and I shall discuss none of them, except incidentally, and with precise reference to their application to medicine. Besides, we know little of them, and I cannot forget that Faraday said that “he once thought he knew something about electricity, but the more he investigated it the less he found he understood it.” Let us then be content with its definition as a “Force,” “pervading all nature, latent in every substance, and liable at any moment to be excited by mechanical or chemical means.”

Nor do I propose to make these Lectures in any sense exhaustive, but, on the contrary, to include in them only such information as is essential, and such as you may readily, and without effort, retain in your memory. I shall direct especial attention to practical points which are of importance to the successful use of electricity; for from non-observance of small details of application many failures have resulted, the treatment getting a measure of discredit, which in strict justice should have attached only to the operator.

[5]

In the present Lecture I shall consider instruments, their construction and management, a dry subject, but an essential one, the first requisite of a good workman being complete familiarity with his tools, lacking which he will be the victim of constantly recurring annoyances and difficulties; for although the present position of electro-therapeutics is largely due to improved methods of administration, these methods would be impossible with faulty instruments, while, on the other hand, the most perfect instruments require a certain amount of skill and care in their management, and some acquaintance with at least the mechanical details of their construction; and without this rudimentary knowledge it is also impossible to usefully compare one instrument with another.[4]

My second Lecture will be devoted to the different methods of applying electricity, and my third and last to its uses in the diagnosis and treatment of disease.

Varieties of Electricity.

We make use of three varieties of electricity in medicine.

Firstly, of static or friction electricity, the electricity of glass and amber, appropriately called from its early investigator, Franklinism.

[6]

Secondly, of the electricity of chemical action, Galvanism, or better, Voltaism, the “Constant Current.”

Thirdly, of Faradism, the induced currents of momentary duration, which are generated orinduced, in a coil of wire by the action upon it, under certain circumstances, of a magnet, or of a Voltaic current.


Ebook Download "How to Use a Galvanic Battery in Medicine and Surgery" PDF ePub Kindle



Post a Comment for "(Download) "How to Use a Galvanic Battery in Medicine and Surgery" by Herbert Tibbits " eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free"