Having thus, I trust, established the individuality of the bath as an electric method, I will without further digression proceed to the consideration of its physiological effects.
The physiological effects of the electric bath may be qualified on the one hand as either “immediate,” or “remote,” on the other as either “transient” or “permanent.” Strictly to classify these is impracticable, and I will therefore be influenced in the order of their enumeration principally by their importance in a therapeutic respect.
One of the most pronounced as well as uniform, and at the same time most important, effects of the electric bath, is its property as an
HYPNOTIC.
This somniferous influence, which is to some extent exercised by local electrization, is here distinguished by its far greater constancy as well as by its greater degree of perfection. That this difference should exist, appears quite natural, when it is considered that the same topical influences which produce it in local electrizations, and which I shall presently endeavor to analyze, are here brought to bear on the entire system. The hypnotic effect is both immediate and remote, and more or less permanent. When there is an immediate inclination to sleep, which may make itself manifest during the bath or immediately after this, it is generally accompanied by a
PLEASANT SENSE OF FATIGUE,
which cannot be likened to weariness, but rather to what we feel after moderate exercise; it is only in some instances, where an individual takes his first bath, or where, for therapeutic reasons, a strong faradic current—accompanied by responsive muscular contractions—is employed, that this feeling is intensified sufficiently to become unpleasant, calling for rest and recuperation, and must here be looked upon as analogous to the effects of severe exercise. It invariably disappears after a brief rest.
Experience and good judgment will enable us moreover in almost all cases to avoid effects of this kind. The immediate inclination to sleep is much more decided as well as constant when the bath is taken late in the day, than when taken in the forenoon. When the latter is the case however, the individual will as a rule become sleepy during the afternoon, or else at an earlier hour than usual in the evening, and sleep more soundly during the night. This is the effect of one bath. A series of baths will however produce more or less marked and permanent improvement in the sleep of individuals, where this has been below the normal standard. And this is among the most invariable of the effects of the electric bath, whether galvanic or faradic.
I have formed a theory as to the rationale of this influence, which I will offer as its probable explanation. We all know that sleep is a process designed by nature for the recuperation of the system after a certain period of activity. In other words, when the various functions have been more or less exercised for their daily allotted time—say seventeen hours—the respective organs need that profound rest which we know as sleep. Now, it is pretty well conceded by physiologists, that electricity stimulates the secretory as well as excretory organs; that it furthers endosmosis and exosmosis—by its electrolytic influence in a physical, by its influence on the nervous system in a catalytic manner, in short, and by virtue of these properties, that it greatly