THE DIGESTIVE APPARATUS,
which may be subdivided into those on a) the appetite, b) digestion, absorption and assimilation, and c) alvine excretion. The improvement of the appetite under electro-balneological treatment is one of the most constant effects of this. While a series of baths will produce permanent results in this respect, an increase of the appetite, in some instances amounting to positive hunger, is a tolerably uniform and more or less immediate result of each separate bath. The permanent improvement of the appetite is relative. Not very appreciable where this is normal, it becomes most marked where the appetite has from some cause been impaired. The effect on the appetite is definite. The effects on absorption and assimilation are presumptive; but when we couple the absence of any corresponding difficulty in digesting the increased supply of food, with the increase before alluded to in the weight of the body, their assumption becomes fully justifiable. It is these combined influences that make the electric bath so valuable a remedy in almost all forms of dyspepsia.
The influence on the alvine process is if anything even more marked than that on the assimilative process. Where the action of the bowels is normal, it is not modified permanently by the electric bath, although we often have, as an immediate consequence, a cathartic effect that manifests itself as a more or less watery evacuation, either a few hours after the bath or on the succeeding day. Where the fecal process however is sluggish, the improvement resulting from the baths is very striking. I shall recur more fully to this subject under the head of constipation.
The effects on the various functions connected with digestion are due doubtless to the combined influences of stimulation of the secretions of the alimentary canal and stimulation of the muscular coats of the stomach and intestines, as well as permanent tonization of the muscularis. While the enhancement of the secretions is undoubtedly due chiefly to the electric stimulus to the secreto-motor nerves, and the increased activity of the muscular coats to a like influence transmitted to their motor nerves, I believe the permanent tonization and invigoration of the muscular fibres to be mainly attributable to the direct trophic influence of the current traversing the parts themselves; and I have no doubt that this direct influence has much to do with the stimulation of the secretions and peristalsis also. At any rate, I have never obtained from galvanization of the nervous centres, which I have practiced in a great number of cases, the striking effects on the alimentary processes which are so uniform a result of the baths.
The influence on the