Electricity : its application in medicine and surgery : a brief and practical exposition of modern scientific electro-therapeutics / by Wellington Adams.

  • Adams Wellington.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Electricity : its application in medicine and surgery : a brief and practical exposition of modern scientific electro-therapeutics / by Wellington Adams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    the butt of amusement and laughing-stock of the physicist and electrical engineer. This condition of affairs is fully merited, and results from the unscien- tific methods of discussion and investigation that have thus far characterized the crude development of this most important, but sadly neglected branch of legitimate medicine. The most fallacious ideas have prevailed concerning the nature of electricity and the laws governing its manifestations. The failure to use proper instruments oftprecision has given rise to the most contradictory reports from the same and differ- ent operators as to the merits of electricity in the various pathological conditions which come under the observation of the physician. The rank and file of the profession who have undertaken to use it as a remedial agent have paid no attention whatever to the technique of the science, and the same may even be said of many of those savants who have made some considerable study of electro-therapeutics. To un- dertake the practice of electro-therapeutics without a thorough knowledge of the fundamental principles and laws of the science of electricity and magnetism, is as ridiculous and impracticable as would be an effort to carry on chemical analyses without having first be- come conversant with the principles of chemistry. In no science is a knowledge of general prin- ciples and natural laws so essential at every step as in the case of electrical science. Its laws are multiple, varied and complex, and a thorough under-