A text-book of electro-therapeutics and electro-surgery.

  • Butler, John (Physician)
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A text-book of electro-therapeutics and electro-surgery. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    a better term), to distinguish it from that artificially generated by apparatus for tbe purpose. But however generated, it is the same force, is governed by the same laws, and yields to the same tests. These divisions only allude to its method of generation, which necessarily influence it in quantity, tension, etc., but do not change its identity. This vis naturce is still a unit, wherever found or in whatever garb it may be clothed, though it may be influenced as far as quantity and intensity are concerned by its mode of generation, by the resistance through which it is transmitted, by duration, interruption, reversion of direction, etc., but the force remains the same, whether the current is called galvanic, faradic, or static. It is the same subtle power that destroys man and beast, and tears up trees by the roots, that relieves the pain of, and lulls to sleep, a sensitive child ; just as the warmth of fire will call back into life half-famished nature, or totally annihilate and destroy it, according to the intensity with which it is used, or the control which we have over it. So with any of our remedies. Writing these lines calls forcibly to mind a passage from one of the greatest of poets, Schiller, which is quite as applicable to the force of electricity as to the energy of fire. Wohlthatig ist des Feuers Macht Wenn sie der Mensch bezakmt, bewacht, Und was er bildet, was er schafft, Das dankt er dieser Himmelskraft. Doeh furchtbar wird die Himmelskraft Wenn sie der Fessel sich entrant, Einhertritt auf der eignen Spur Die freie Tochter der Natur. Wehe, wenn sie losgelassen Wachsend oline Widerstand Durch die volkbelebten Gassen Wiilzt den ungeheuren Brand 1 It is so difficult to investigate all the facts of galvanism in anything like progressive order, that it seems best to first examine the sources of the force and the laws which govern it, assuming for the present that the reader possesses a knowledge of the principles necessary to an understanding of the facts, and