On the medical uses of electricity : a clinical lecture / by George W. Balfour.

  • Balfour, George William, 1823-1903.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the medical uses of electricity : a clinical lecture / by George W. Balfour. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    3/22
    THE MEDICAL OSES OF ELECTRICITY.1 Somewhat more than two thousand years ago, Thales, the great Ionian philosopher, discovered that a piece of amber rubbed with a dry woollen cloth attracted to itself any light objects in its neigh¬ bourhood. He concluded that amber had a soul, an anima or vital principle, which was nourished by what it was able to attract to itself. This soul or anima we know as little about as Thales did, and we call it electricity, in memory of the amber—electron—from which that old philosopher first obtained this mysterious agent, which numbers among its phenomena the mild radiance of the aurora borealis, the destructive force of the thunderstorm, and the fibril¬ lation of a muscle, not to speak of its many marvellous applica¬ tions in the world of arts, which are daily being multiplied and extended. The simple experiment of Thales remained barren and unfruitful for rather over two thousand years, till the time of Queen Eliza¬ beth, when her physician, Gilbert, made a trifling advance by showing that sulphur, wax, glass, etc., possessed properties similar to those of amber. In another hundred years Otto von Guericke invented the electric machine, and ere the close of the following century Galvani and Volta had given to the world those wonder¬ ful discoveries which, in their fuller development, have revo¬ lutionised society, and put a girdle round the earth more wonder¬ ful than Puck’s, laying on the breakfast table of the New World the details of the coming day’s business as it has just been transacted 1 This lecture is published at the request of some of those who heard it some two or three years ago, and in the hope that it may he useful to others in want of a concise statement of the more important facts of medical electro-thera¬ peutics.