the patient can well enough spare it, and facilitate the cure thereby.

The shocks must be passed from the hips to the feet obliquely, as for fever, in the first instance; but may be increased in their number, or frequently repeated. In the next place, bring the chain from the hip as high as the pit of the stomach, and opposite the stomach on the sides and on the back, and pass twenty shocks in the several directions down to the feet; next, pass four or five from the shoulder to the hand, on either side. Soon after these shocks are passed, perhaps in one hour, the patient will begin to bear them through the lungs, in which direction their strength may be gradually increased, till the whole disturbance is intirely removed. But it must be remembered that the same means prescribed for fever, to assist in bringing forward a flow of perspiration, must be made use of here, and indeed in all cases of increased excitement, and kept up until the desired effect is produced, or so far as can be produced by this evacuation; in perippeumony, internal evacuations are frequently necessary, especially by cathartics; in which ase, glauber salts are esteemed proper, in the most of cases.

Perhaps, by often repeating the caution, I may be heard: keep your patient from every degree of coolness for several days; be exceedingly careful in this particular, or all is overthrown, and you will destroy your patient: not only so, you will still keep mankind from the knowledge of its use, and thereby indirectly take away many lives, and leave many to languish in pain and misery.

The operator, whether a physician or private character, will understand that it is expected that the electric shock, duly administered, will perform the principal part of the cure: a single dose of glauber salts may be necessary. If bleeding might be proper, and no physician can handily be had, it may be supplied by continuing the perspiration a longer time, and by reducing the tension of the vessels more and more, and their action will grow more moderate, till health is obtained, without letting blood.

Pleurisy.

The symptoms in a pleurisy being considerably different, they will require a different mode of treatment, both in the manner and degree of the electrical operations.

When the pulse is high, with a general inflammation and a suppressed perspiration, the shock must be passed in the same manner as for fever; but the shock must not be passed through the affect part of the pleura, till it hath been previously passed in all other directions. The irritated part of the pleura is to be considered as the lungs in a peripneumony, incapable of receiving the shock, till relieved by a previous operation in other parts, which,

Continue backward        Continue forward