IMPROVEMENT OF NUTRITION,
as manifested by rapid increase of weight, and which I have likewise touched upon in the preceding chapter, is a reliable, constant effect of electric baths. Where previous loss of weight is due to an incurable organic disease, it is, if at all obtained, of course much less in degree, as well as transient. When due, however, as is frequently the case, to causes that are amenable to electrical influence, the increase in weight is marked, and has a tendency to be permanent.
It will be seen that the few therapeutic effects which I have here enumerated, are in reality nothing more than intensified physiological effects, there being about them nothing that might be termed specific. It may be asked in reply: why then did I devote any space to them at all? I will answer that I thought best to point out some general therapeutic USES for which electric baths may be made available, and the indications for which are furnished by so great a number of pathological conditions, that omitting special reference to them would have led to a great deal of tautology in the chapter on “special therapeutics.”
Before leaving the subject of “general uses” of the baths, I will dwell for a moment on their admirable adaptability as a