Perkin's metalic points; they would, by a continual stroking, assist the vessels in carrying off their morbid contents; although not so suddenly as the gentle shock. This, with much deference to Dr. Perkin's opinion, I conceive to be their chief use; and perhaps a pair of steel-pointed scissors would answer the same purpose. Their friction may, however, remove spasm, when it approaches nigh to the part affected. (1) In applying the shock to local affections, suppose in the knee, the shock should occupy a greater space than the affection of the disease; that is, in the supposed case, the shock should be passed from about the hip through the knee, nearly or quite to the foot: if reduced sufficiently low, they may be given in great numbers. I have given sixty, seventy, eighty, to one hundred in a day, but exceedingly light. Purgatives are very often necessary in a high degree of inflammatory rheumatism.

Inflammatory Sore Throat.

WHEN the pulse is high, and the perspiration suppressed, administer electricity in the same manner and degree as for a fever, not omitting the other diaporetics, or assisting means of sweating: if a purge is necessary, give it: after perspiration is effected, and many shocks passed from shoulder to shoulder, and from under the chin to the feet, with the neck warmly covered, prepare a decoction of the inside of white oak bark, which any body will understand, and let the patient drink a little at a time of it, till well: the electric shock will remove the inflammation, and the bark will heal the internal soreness. The electrical shocks, in a proper degree of warmth, will absoltely effect the whole cure, but may be assisted by as many corroborants as you can obtain. Any internal inflammation, or dilation of the lungs, by a suppressed perspiration, may always be removed, in a little time, by the shocks passed in proper directions, and in due degrees, upon the part affected, &c. (2)

* * * * * *

Note 1:
It is not a little astonishing, that a man of education and talents, should fall into the notion, that fever and inflammation should originate in an increased quantity of elementary fire, (for it must be that if any thing) imbibed in the human system, that might be extracted by pointed instruments, on an isolating stool. This appears to be Dr. Perkin's notion of fever, as is evident from his attempting to treat the yellow fever at New-York with his points. It is to be regretted that his mistake should cost him his life; but it proves him to be sincerely mistaken. I doubt not, but that some cures were effected while some of these were operating; but those might be effected by the stimulation of the imagination; and such I suppose to be the principle cause of cures wrought by those fancied gentlemen called animal magnetisers.

Note 2:
Who, that knows by what means America lost the founder of her national greatness - what the disease that proved fatal to our greatly-beloved WASHINGTON - and will not feel with me, that it is almost too late to bless mankind with the knowledge of this inestimable mean of life and health! I say to myself, had physicians attended to the entreaties of some good and great characters in England, who have asserted, from a thousand experiments, that electricity far exceeded all medicine they ever knew, Mount Vernon might now have enjoyed her delight, and America her glory!!

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