THE MIND
of electric baths, is a natural result of the enhanced tone and vigor of the physical system, and keeps pace with this. Mental buoyancy and even exhilaration are among the most common sequences of electric baths. Although indirect, these results are none the less decided.
It has been my aim in the foregoing remarks to give the reader, as concisely as possible and within the limits which I set for myself in the beginning of the present chapter, a summary of the more important physiological effects of electric baths. As the isolated results of observations made in a limited field by one unaided individual, I trust the shortcomings of this chapter will be viewed indulgently. If what I have said of the physiological effects of electric baths proves the means of stimulating to further investigation more competent observers than myself, my labor, whatever its imperfections, will not have been in vain.
Footnotes:
[4] Dr. Franz Hartmann; “Der acute and chronische Gelenkrheumatismus,” Erlangen, 1874; pp. 194 et seq.
[5] The Author here refers to mineral-water. Dr. S.
[6] The Medical Use of Electricity, with special reference to general electrization as a tonic, etc. New York, 1867.
[7] Beard and Rockwell; Medical and Surgical Electricity. N. Y. 1875.
[8] Op. cit. pp. 253. et seq.
CHAPTER IV.
GENERAL THERAPEUTIC EFFECTS AND USES.
The therapeutic uses of a remedy are based on what we know of its physiological effects. Many—or rather most—of the therapeutic effects of this as well as of most other remedies, correspond to certain physiological effects. Those therapeutic effects whereto we find none analogous among the physiological effects, are yet the results of the physiological tendencies of the remedy, and where these tendencies do not manifest themselves as results, it is because they find no field for action in the healthy organism. When they meet with the requisite pathological conditions, these tendencies make themselves manifest in the shape of definite results, commonly known as therapeutic effects.
Nothnagel, in his classical work,[9] recognizes this theory by excluding from his book the term “therapeutic effects” altogether. Where he finds it necessary to say anything of the physiological effects of a remedy, in addition to those “on man in health,” he speaks—still under the head of “physiological effects”—of those “on man when sick.” When, setting aside its empirical employment, we come then to inquire what it is that furnishes us with the true indications for the use of a remedy, analysis of the question leads us invariably back to its physiological effects. If I have failed nevertheless to include the few effects which I am about to touch on, under the head of “physiological effects,” I have done so simply in compliance with universal usage, and as a matter of convenience for reference.
I will now, without further digression, proceed to the consideration of those effects of electric baths not yet enumerated.
As a fitting precursor to the enumeration of the therapeutic properties of the remedy under consideration, it may be well to dwell for a moment on what is among its most prominent characteristics; I have reference to its great value as a