The value of electrical treatment / by Julius Althaus.

  • Althaus, Julius, 1833-1900.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The value of electrical treatment / by Julius Althaus. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    drugs, we have more definite physiological knowledge; yet clinical experience must always be reckoned with apart from physiology. When applying electricity to a patient, therefore, we must certainly be thoroughly acquainted with, and to a great extent be guided by, a knowledge of its physiological effects upon the different tissues of the body; yet clinical experience will always be the most important element in any success we may achieve. In operative surgery it is generally found that the mortality diminishes in proportion to the increasing experience of the operator; and similarly success in electro-therapeutics is generally found to be more marked as the practical experience of the operator is becoming larger. No amount of reading will give such experience; and as anatomy is only learnt by dissection, thus skill in electro-therapeutics can only be acquired by again and again applying electricity to patients whose cases may be suitable for such treatment. The mode of action of the constant current is a very complex one, and although much of it is known, there is unquestionably much further knowledge concerning it to be gained. It is, however, a well established fact that the structure and function, more especially of nervous and muscular tissue, may be profoundly modified by the passage of the current. Electrotonus. Pfliiger's researches on electrotonus which were made on frogs' nerves, but have been shown to be applicable to living men as well, appear to me to supply the key to the large majority of the therapeutical applications of the constant current. The latter when passing through a nerve, causes definite alterations in its condition, viz. a zone of increased excitability in the neighbourhood of the cathode— catelectrotonus—and a zone of diminished excitability in the neighbourhood of the anode—anelectrotonus, there