Electro-therapeutics of neurasthenia / by W.F. Robinson.

  • Robinson W. F.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Electro-therapeutics of neurasthenia / by W.F. Robinson. 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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    but they may occur, and they are just the ones that it is not desirable to fail with. The ordinary case will admit of an increase of one milliampere every second day until, say, five milli- amperes are given. Here, again, patients will be found who have reached their limit, and if the dose be increased the sleep is interfered with—a sure proof that the dose is too strong for them. Let us now take just the opposite condition of affairs, where, instead of undue sensibility to the cur- rent, there is present an unusual tolerance of it. Such patients are very apt to sleep fairly well, so that this symptom cannot be used as well for a guide as in the other cases. Suppose a man is being treated wha may have all the symptoms of neurasthenia in an ag- gravated form, but who sleeps soundly—let us not say well, for he is almost sure to be troubled with dreams, and moreover he awakes in the morning unrefreshed and with a feeling of lassitude. The treatment is begun with the minimum male dose of two milliam- peres, and rapidly increased to ten milliamperes for five minutes, which I consider the average dose—if an average can be said to exist in this matter. Suppose that under this steady increase he makes little or no improvement, and he is in this condition at the end of, two weeks. Some authors would say, increase the dose still more. My advice is to change the method for that known as Spinal Galvanism. I place the positive pole, because it is the least irritat-