possible a treatment of these areas in every case, though far from skilled assistance. The treatment by cautery must always remain a treatment by the skilled specialist in selected cases. Even if my sensitive spot in the pharynx is nothing new, this method will at least place in the hands of thousands of hay fever sufferers a simple method of relief, which thought there is more satisfaction than in being reputed the discoverer of the resurrection bone itself.[1]

CHAPTER V

THE FARADIC CURRENT AND OTHER FORMS OF ELECTRICITY

The distinguished dermatologist, Dr. Duncan Bulkley, used to argue that lupus erythematosus was a neurosis because he could cure it with phosphorus and thought so highly of this tour d'esprit that he made it the subject of a Presidential Address.

In the same way I might argue for my favorite theory that hay fever is a neurosis, an angioneurotic œdema, because it is curable by electricity; or that electricity cures hay fever because it is a neurosis. These are examples of reasoning by analogy, found so frequently in medical writings, so plausible and so perilous, leading more often to error than to truth. So I will not argue the matter at all, but simply state the result of my observation that faradic electricity cures hay-fever. This electric treatment takes time and trouble, but if both physician and patient are willing to take that time and trouble, more permanent cures may be secured than by any other treatment known to me.

The use of electricity to cure hay fever is one of those bits of therapeutic gold that lie long hidden in medical literature, are found for a moment, and quickly lost again. Back in 1875 Beard and Rockwell speak of two cases, one cured and the other relieved by descending galvanism. In 1871, Neftel relieved a case of hay asthma by galvanizing the vagus; but recent books know nothing of it. Monell, Bigelow, Massey, and Bartholow know electricity about the nose only as a cautery. Tousey's big book suggests the local application of the high frequency current in hay fever, of which more anon at the end of this Chapter.

It was from none of these that I stumbled on the fact that faradic electricity would cure hay fever. In 1894 there appeared in New York a patriarchal old gentleman with a queer idea that he could cure pneumonia, tuberculosis of the lungs, and asthma by manipulation. He was Dr. Orrick Metcalfe, of Natchez, Mississippi, a brother of Dr. John T. Metcalfe, long one of the leading physicians of New York and Professor of Medicine in the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Metcalfe visited various hospitals, trying to interest physicians in his method, demonstrating it freely to whomever would attend. He had a hard time with the Philistines, who, for his brother's sake, would receive him politely in their clinics, give him any number of charity patients to work on, but seldom take the trouble to go personally and see what he could do. He remained in New York for several years, during which time I watched his work and was convinced that the principle was sound and the results good. He made one striking cure of a patient of mine, an old lady who for many years had a most obstinate cough that she had taken all over the world, to Egypt and Switzerland and Colorado, without relief. Dr. Metcalfe treated her by his manipulation in the winter of 1896, cured the cough so thoroughly that it has never returned, now twenty years, as I know personally, because the old lady still consults me for minor ills. Let me add this tribute to his memory, that there never lived a more unselfish, practically benevolent physician than Orrick Metcalfe, true to the noblest traditions of medicine, working away at his hobby, not because it was profitable, which it was not, but because he believed it to be true, constantly seeking with open mind to improve his methods and to learn better ways.

In regard to asthma and pneumonia and phthisis, his starting point was a supposed stiffness or rigidity or lameness of the muscles of respiration as the first step in the chain of events, and his effort was to limber up at as early a time as possible this stiffness of the muscles. By manipulating the muscles of the chest, neck, back, and abdomen, he would find certain points that hurt or where the muscles were plainly tight or stiff. Continuing the manipulation, he would have the patient take deep breaths and try to cough. Often, when a certain spot was manipulated, the patient would begin to cough without prompting. Such a spot was his delight to find. He would continue to manipulate it, encouraging the patient to cough and expectorate, holding that free expectoration brought relief to the lesion. In pneumonia the expectoration was often bloody, which pleased him mightily. I have seen him thus manipulate a consumptive only a few hours after a hemorrhage and encourage him to expectorate, in such direct contradiction to our usual policy of absolute rest that I trembled inwardly for the patient.

The possible relation between a muscle-bound chest and dyspnœa is easily understood, but those of us who watched him could not see a clear connection between the muscle-bound chest and pneumonia or phthisis. However, in some later paper I will return to this part of Dr. Metcalfe's work. To return to asthma, Dr. Metcalfe used to say that he thought there was some way of relieving the tight muscles better than by manipulation and regretted his unfamiliarity with electricity, which he thought might be that better way. I gave him a spare battery that we had around the office, but the old dog cannot easily learn new tricks and the old doctor stuck to what he knew and had relied on for so many years, his own fingers. He treated hay fever by manipulating the eyes, nose, and both the inside and the outside of the throat, wherever the itching appeared.

About this time a patient applied for relief of attacks of asthma that were brought on by inhaling dust. Every time he stirred the papers on his desk—and being an artist, his desk was always dusty—he had a disagreeable attack of asthma. Here was an opportunity to test the Metcalfe theory of tight muscles. As I was much more familiar with the faradic battery than with manipulation and it was more agreeable to use, I placed one sponge on the back of the neck and with the other twitched the muscles over the chest. To include all the respiratory muscles, I exercised those of the neck and throat, the abdomen and back, as well as the pectorals and the muscles about the scapulæ. Until one stops to think of it, he does not realize the extent of the respiratory muscles. Almost every muscle from the base of the skull to the brim of the pelvis is directly concerned in respiration.

With the faradic current just as with the