A text-book of electricity in medicine and surgery : for the use of students and practitioners / by George Vivian Poore.

  • Poore, George Vivian, 1843-1904.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A text-book of electricity in medicine and surgery : for the use of students and practitioners / by George Vivian Poore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    a consideration of its physiological action, and from the physiological facts they are accustomed, in the third place, to deduce certain rules for our guidance as to its therapeutic employment. We shall follow a similar course in this work; and although it is- to be feared the reader will find that the basis of electro-therapeusis is empirical rather than physiological, we should not on that account be justified in disregarding the facts which have been established as to electro-physiology. Electricity has been used in medicine in its three most usual forms. First, in the form which is generated in so- , called batteries, and which has been called the haiterij current, or, in honour of its discoverer. Galvanism, or, in honour of its chief investigator, Voltaic electricity, or, by reason of its usual method of employment, the continuous current. Secondly, it has been employed—and largely employed—in the form of the ' induced current ■' the form which has been named, after our countryman, Faradism, and which, from its usual method of employment, is not uncommonly spoken of as the interrupted current. Thii-dly, it has been employed in the form of frictional electricity, such as is generated by the friction of glass discs or cylinders, and which has also received the name of static electruity, or, in honour of its chief original investigator, Jbranklimsm. These three forms of electricity generated from batteries or by mduction, or by friction, and which we shall speak of as Galvanism, Faradism, and Franklinism, are to be kept distxnct m the mind, and-being employed, as they are, for widely different purposes-must no more' be confounded hemp ' ^^^^oiic., opium, chloral, and Indian as to begm really at the beginning; and since some know- ledge of electrical prmciples is absolutely necessary for the proper comprehension of the subject with which we have to deal; and smce, at present, electricity is not one of the sub B 2