POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE MANIFESTATIONS.
Acute diseases are to be regarded as electrically positive, and chronic affections as negative. The exceptions are rare, if any at all. Malignant cholera, which is eminently acute, might by some be considered as an exception. In negative diseases, there is a low degree of electro-vitality. And it has been remarked by careful observers, particularly in the Orient, that cholera rages with greatest destructiveness when no special electric phenomena have for long time appeared in the atmosphere, and when the artificial electrical apparatus could be made to yield its sparks only with difficulty, or not at all. And again, after a thunderstorm, when the electric machine works again freely, the cholera is also found to abate quickly, and sometimes very greatly. The inference drawn from these facts has been that the prevalence of cholera is largely owing to a lack of electricity in the atmosphere, and consequently to a want of the animal electricity or electro-vitality in the system of the patient; and thence it might be concluded that cholera implies a negative condition of the system. I think there is a fallacy in this reasoning. There appears to me to be an unwarrantable assumption in confidently attributing the long absence from the heavens of marked electrical phenomena, and the failure of the electric machine to give its spark, to an unquestioned deficiency of atmospheric electricity. Electrical manifestations take place only when the plus and minus conditions are existing, in relation to each other, somewhat near, or not very remote; and the visible phenomena appear when the positive and negative rush together, so as to produce a polar equilibrium. But suppose a plus condition to exist over a wide region, then, everything being overcharged, the visible phenomena would be as rare and as difficult of attainment as if all around were negative. How, then, can it be inferred, with any certainty, from such data, that there is a deficiency of electricity, rather than an excess of it?
I have not treated a case of cholera; but my own impression of it is, that in the first stage, or during the "rice-water" discharges, the condition of the system is, as in other acute affections, excessively positive; but that, as the collapse comes on, it rapidly subsides into an intensely negative state, thus assuming the chief characteristic of a chronic condition.
In the above remarks, I would not be understood to indicate any doubt that the prevalence of cholera is often aggravated or mitigated by peculiar electrical states of the atmosphere. It appears altogether probable that such may be the fact; and I should presume that electrical treatment, properly administered, would be found eminently successful in this fearful malady.
Again, in chronic rheumatism there might, at first view, seem to be frequent exceptions to the rule last above stated; but the cases alluded to are not such. It is often the fact, during chronic rheumatism, that soreness and severe pain are felt, especially under the presentation of the negative pole, thus showing that these points require to be treated with the positive pole. But, in such cases, although the general disease of the system be chronic and negative, these sore and severely painful points have, for the time, risen in their electro-vital condition, and so become acute and positive. But when chronic rheumatism is attended with only a dull pain, and that chiefly under exercise of the parts, and with little or no increase of pain under an application of the negative pole of the A D current, medium strength, and with no swelling, then the pain, the stiffness and the lameness are all marks of the negative state, and the parts must be treated with the negative pole of the A D current, strongly at first, but diminishing in force, from time to time, as the patient becomes relieved.
Alkaline affections—those causing excessive alkaline secretions—are electrically positive. Acid or acidulous states are negative.
HEALING.
For healing wounds, burns, ulcers, irritation of mucous membranes, and cutaneous eruptions, the A D current is by far the best. Recent wounds, contusions and burns are electrically positive. Old ulcers and irritations are generally negative.
DIAGNOSIS.
To make a correct diagnosis, it is needful to bear in mind the following general principles: