Neuralgic affections are frequently found difficult, or even impossible, to be cured by means of medicines, and yet, in the very same cases, these affections yield and disappear with comparative facility when brought under the electric current, judiciously applied, according to the principles of this new system.
Chronic cases, and others of an asthenic character, are often very stubborn under the medicines of pharmacy, and are commonly the dread of physicians; yet, under scientific treatment by electricity, they rarely fail to lose their formidable character and to become obedient to the remedial agent.
Fourth.—In enumerating a few of the peculiar advantages of this system, I should add that it corrects the usual electric practice of the profession, so far as they become acquainted with it. As before intimated, the mass of physicians at present, who treat more or less electrically, do so with no knowledge, or next to none, of the great versatility of action of which the electric current is capable. They know nothing of the electrical polarization of the living organism in health, nor how it is variously affected in disease. The particular electrical state of the diseased organs is a matter foreign to their minds. They appear to suppose the point to be immediately aimed at as a means of cure is to get the electricity from the machine into the affected part or parts; whereas it should be to change, by correction, the polarization of the part or parts; and, if there be virus present, to neutralize that. Equally unacquainted are they generally with the diverse physiological action of the several modifications of the electric force—galvanism, magnetism, faradism, and frictional electricity. This, in their candor, they commonly acknowledge. And, for the most part, they are little or nothing better acquainted with the distinctive effects on the system of the positive and negative poles of the instrument. There is, therefore, plainly no science in their electrical practice. Every thing is done at random—all is empirical.
But the system here taught opens the light upon all of these points. For practical purposes, at least, it is, in its essential features, the only system of electrical therapeutics which has in it any real merit—the only system which can be true. By this, the writer does not mean to assert, or to imply, that the little book now before the reader contains no error, either in respect to theory or practice. In this early stage of our system's history, it would be remarkable if it did not contain errors in both these respects. But what it is intended to affirm is, that the book presents the cardinal features of a true, and the only possibly true, system of electrical practice. All possibly true systems of geometry must necessarily be essentially the same; and so, too, all possibly true systems of electrical medication must be essentially one. That one system, it is candidly and confidently believed, is briefly contained in the present little volume.
ELECTRICAL MEDICATION.
FIRST PRINCIPLES.
DR. JEROME KIDDER'S ELECTRO-MAGNETIC MACHINE.
On opening the machine-box, as it comes from the manufacturer, there will be found a glass bottle, intended to hold the battery fluid when not in use; a glass cup or jar, to serve as the battery cell; a pair of insulated metallic conducting cords; two tin electrodes; a brass clamp; and, under the helix-box, (which raise), the battery metals and two connecting wires to unite the battery with the helix.