Medical electricity; a practical treatise on the applications of electricity to medicine and surgery.

  • Bartholow, Roberts, 1831-1904.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical electricity; a practical treatise on the applications of electricity to medicine and surgery. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    17/348 (page vii)
    In my annual course of Lectures on Materia Medica and Thera- peutics, I have discussed, more or less fully, the subject of electricity as a therapeutic agent. It happened in this-way that my attention was called to the need of a suitable text-book. That there are excel- lent works on medical electricity is undeniable ; but some of them are too voluminous, others too scientific, and not a few wanting both in fulness and in accuracy. I have attempted in the preparation of this work to avoid these errors; to prepare one so simple in statement, that a student without previous acquaintance with the subject may readily master the essentials; so complete as to embrace the whole subject of medical electricity, and so condensed as to be contained in a moderate compass. I have endeavored to keep constantly in view the needs of the two classes for whom the work is prepared—students and practitioners. I have assumed an entire unacquaintance with the elements of the subject as the point of departure—for I am addressing those who have either failed to acquire this preliminary knowledge, or having acquired it, find that after the lapse of years it has become misty and confused. In the account of electrical phenomena, I have adhered to the modes of expression with which the medical electrical text-books have made us familiar. The time has not come, it seems to me, to adopt the terms and explanations now employed by practical electricians: it is a transition period in which both the old and the new should have a measure of recognition. I have, accordingly, followed the usual course in the account of electrical principles and instruments, intro- ducing also the new terms—the units—by which the electro-motive force, quantity, capacity, and resistance are expressed. Electricity as applied to practical arts—to lighting, heating, telegraphy, and me- chanical work generally—demands different treatment, especially as