tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[7]—have caused it to be extensively adopted by the medical profession, both here and in Europe. It is, however, not with its results that I have to do at present, but with its appellation and true nature. General faradization, so-called, consists of a series of local faradizations, administered during one and the same séance, until the current has alternately been made to impinge upon and traverse the entire or at least a large portion of the body. This cumulative procedure, it is true, approaches general electrization, as represented by the electric bath, more closely than any of the other local methods; yet it is not that which its name would imply, and I do not think it requires argument to make it apparent, that even this procedure differs vastly from the electric (whether galvanic or faradic) bath, where the current at one and the same time impinges directly on every peripheral nerve-end (excepting those of the head and face) and traverses every part of the body, obtaining—both as to reflex and direct effects—as a whole that which the method known as general faradization seeks to obtain by the cumulation of fractional portions.

Having thus, I trust, established the individuality of the bath as an electric method, I will without further digression proceed to the consideration of its physiological effects.

The physiological effects of the electric bath may be qualified on the one hand as either “immediate,” or “remote,” on the other as either “transient” or “permanent.” Strictly to classify these is impracticable, and I will therefore be influenced in the order of their enumeration principally by their importance in a therapeutic respect.

One of the most pronounced as well as uniform, and at the same time most important, effects of the electric bath, is its property as an

HYPNOTIC.

This somniferous influence, which is to some extent exercised by local electrization, is here distinguished by its far greater constancy as well as by its greater degree of perfection. That this difference should exist, appears quite natural, when it is considered that the same topical influences which produce it in local electrizations, and which I shall presently endeavor to analyze, are here brought to bear on the entire system. The hypnotic effect is both immediate and remote, and more or less permanent. When there is an immediate inclination to sleep, which may make itself manifest during the bath or immediately after this, it is generally accompanied by a

PLEASANT SENSE OF FATIGUE,

which cannot be likened to weariness, but rather to what we feel after moderate exercise; it is only in some instances, where an individual takes his first bath, or where, for therapeutic reasons, a strong faradic current—accompanied by responsive muscular contractions—is employed, that this feeling is intensified sufficiently to become unpleasant, calling for rest and recuperation, and must here be looked upon as analogous to the effects of severe exercise. It invariably disappears after a brief rest.

Experience and good judgment will enable us moreover in almost all cases to avoid effects of this kind. The immediate inclination to sleep is much more decided as well as constant when the bath is taken late in the day, than when taken in the forenoon. When the latter is the case however, the individual will as a rule become sleepy during the afternoon, or else at an earlier hour than usual in the evening, and sleep more soundly during the night. This is the effect of one bath. A series of baths will however produce more or less marked and permanent improvement in the sleep of individuals, where this has been below the normal standard. And this is among the most invariable of the effects of the electric bath, whether galvanic or faradic.

I have formed a theory as to the rationale of this influence, which I will offer as its probable explanation. We all know that sleep is a process designed by nature for the recuperation of the system after a certain period of activity. In other words, when the various functions have been more or less exercised for their daily allotted time—say seventeen hours—the respective organs need that profound rest which we know as sleep. Now, it is pretty well conceded by physiologists, that electricity stimulates the secretory as well as excretory organs; that it furthers endosmosis and exosmosis—by its electrolytic influence in a physical, by its influence on the nervous system in a catalytic manner, in short, and by virtue of these properties, that it greatly

ENHANCES THE CHANGE OF MATTER

and incites the various organs to so great an activity as to cause them to perform in a comparatively brief space of time—say an hour, the work of several hours. The natural sequence is obvious: The want of rest—of sleep, is felt at a correspondingly earlier period. I offer this as a probable explanation of the immediate or almost immediate disposition to sleep. As to the permanent improvement in sleep, where this has been below the normal standard, it must always be due to the removal of some morbid condition, and thus belongs among therapeutic results, rather than physiological effects. It is true that in many instances of agrypnia we are unable to discover any pathological condition that would account for this symptom; but the probability is that here there is a sluggishness of some one or more of the functions, mental or physical, too obscurely manifested to be discovered by our present means of diagnosis, yet reached and rectified by a mode of electrization that traverses and permeates every portion of the body.

If this explanation of the hypnotic effect of the electric bath be not the true one, it is at least—so far as I know—the first attempt at accounting for a phenomenon that has been noticed as a result of even local applications of electricity by many observers, and about the pretty uniform occurrence of which there can be no doubt.

With respect to the effect on the

TEMPERATURE AND PULSE,

I have made a number of observations, of which I have recorded twenty-two, made on persons where both were at or nearly at the normal standard. With regard to the frequency of the pulse, the results were conflicting and by no means reliable. In the majority of cases there was an increase, immediately after the bath, ranging from four to eighteen beats per minute. In others there was no change whatever, and in a few there was an absolute diminution in frequency; this last I believe however to be a therapeutic rather than physiological effect, manifesting itself only where there is pneumogastric asthenia, and attributable directly to electric stimulation of this nerve. Thus in one instance, which occurred in the person of a physician of this city, who had an intermittent pulse, the result was as follows: Immediately before bath: pulse 70, two intermissions; at the expiration of 15 minutes, during which he was under the influence of a descending galvanic current: pulse 65, two intermissions; at the end of ten more minutes, during which he received the faradic current: pulse 65, no intermissions; ten minutes after leaving the bath: pulse 66, no intermissions. As a rule then, we may look for an immediate and more or less transient moderate increase in frequency of the pulse. As for any permanent increase or reduction of the pulse, there is none as a physiological effect. Where such an one does take place, it is by the removal of some morbid influence on the heart, and must be