and incites the various organs to so great an activity as to cause them to perform in a comparatively brief space of time—say an hour, the work of several hours. The natural sequence is obvious: The want of rest—of sleep, is felt at a correspondingly earlier period. I offer this as a probable explanation of the immediate or almost immediate disposition to sleep. As to the permanent improvement in sleep, where this has been below the normal standard, it must always be due to the removal of some morbid condition, and thus belongs among therapeutic results, rather than physiological effects. It is true that in many instances of agrypnia we are unable to discover any pathological condition that would account for this symptom; but the probability is that here there is a sluggishness of some one or more of the functions, mental or physical, too obscurely manifested to be discovered by our present means of diagnosis, yet reached and rectified by a mode of electrization that traverses and permeates every portion of the body.
If this explanation of the hypnotic effect of the electric bath be not the true one, it is at least—so far as I know—the first attempt at accounting for a phenomenon that has been noticed as a result of even local applications of electricity by many observers, and about the pretty uniform occurrence of which there can be no doubt.
With respect to the effect on the
TEMPERATURE AND PULSE,
I have made a number of observations, of which I have recorded twenty-two, made on persons where both were at or nearly at the normal standard. With regard to the frequency of the pulse, the results were conflicting and by no means reliable. In the majority of cases there was an increase, immediately after the bath, ranging from four to eighteen beats per minute. In others there was no change whatever, and in a few there was an absolute diminution in frequency; this last I believe however to be a therapeutic rather than physiological effect, manifesting itself only where there is pneumogastric asthenia, and attributable directly to electric stimulation of this nerve. Thus in one instance, which occurred in the person of a physician of this city, who had an intermittent pulse, the result was as follows: Immediately before bath: pulse 70, two intermissions; at the expiration of 15 minutes, during which he was under the influence of a descending galvanic current: pulse 65, two intermissions; at the end of ten more minutes, during which he received the faradic current: pulse 65, no intermissions; ten minutes after leaving the bath: pulse 66, no intermissions. As a rule then, we may look for an immediate and more or less transient moderate increase in frequency of the pulse. As for any permanent increase or reduction of the pulse, there is none as a physiological effect. Where such an one does take place, it is by the removal of some morbid influence on the heart, and must be looked upon as a therapeutic result.
With respect to the temperature, the results were somewhat more uniform. I have found that where this is either normal or slightly below, the immediate but transient effect is to raise it from 2 to 6 tenths of a degree (Fahrenheit)—in most instances 4 tenths. In a very few cases it remained unchanged, and in one case, where before the bath the temperature was 100, at the close of the bath it was 99⅗. Of permanent modifications of the temperature, the same holds good that I have said of permanent changes in the pulse. It must not be forgotten that the temperature of the water is undoubtedly an important factor in modifying the temperature of the body. In almost all instances where my observations were made, the temperature of the water was below that of the body, being 95° or a little less. This, which has a tendency to lower the bodily temperature, is to some extent counterbalanced by the suppression of the insensible perspiration, so that modifications of temperature resulting from electric baths, the water of which is but few degrees below 98½°, may justly be attributed to the influence of the electric current. The importance of the electric bath as a
PHYSIOLOGICAL STIMULANT AND TONIC
cannot be overrated. I deem it superior in this respect to any other known agent. This effect manifests itself immediately by a feeling of exhilaration and unwonted vigor, remotely by an improvement—where there is a margin for such—in the performance of some or all of the physiological functions, as well as by a gradual but nevertheless marked increase in weight.
Most striking among the tonic influences of the baths, are those that occur within the sphere of the digestive and sexual apparatuses. I will first consider the effects on