been resorted to: I have even seen the bastinado employed, by slapping the soles of the feet with a wet towel. Recently the painful stimulus of the alternating current of the electro-magnetic machine has been employed with marked success: Dr. Martin Barry was, I believe, one of the first who had recourse to this remedy in the case of an infant patient at the Edinburgh Maternity Hospital. The child, who was nine months old, was dosed to sleep with twenty-five minims of laudanum: it appeared, when Dr. Barry saw it, to be in a state of hopeless narcotism. By the application of the current from the electro-magnetic machine the little patient was kept at least partially awake for nearly five hours, when the respiration became calmer, and the pupils dilated: the child eventually did well.

In the only case of poisoning by opium in the adult in which I directed the employment of the current, the conductors were placed in the moistened hands of the patient, and fastened to them by a piece of tape; the current thus passed without trouble, and with the very obvious result of arousing the patient.

I once applied this remedy to a very marked instance of that old disease Catalepsy. A young lady became the subject of this affection, and for hours together appeared perfectly extatic, the eyes looking upwards with a fixed gaze, and the

body assuming a rigid state, so that she resembled a statue. When left to herself she generally became fixed, in rather graceful positions than otherwise; but the limbs could be moved, like wax, in any position, and there they would remain. She remained once, to my own knowledge, for four hours in one position, and that an irksome one too. Finding all remedies fail, I had two basins of water placed on a table, each connected with a conductor of the double current electro-magnetic machine. The next time she became cataleptic, her hands were immersed in these basins: in an instant the charm was broken, she uttered a loud scream, nearly kicked over the table, burst into a flood of tears, and had no other attack. Real or assumed, the disease was cured.

I would strongly recommend a trial of the electro-magnetic current in cases of drowning. Here, when life has become apparently extinct, it would be worth trying how far the remedy might be of use. One of the conductors of the alternating machine might be applied to the neck, whilst the other is moved along the margins of the ribs from the scrobiculus cordis, so as to influence the diaphragm, and perhaps the ganglionic nerves. One case is recorded in which this remedy was successful in restoring animation. I am well aware that for the last fifty years a galvanic battery has always been included among the appli

ances to be had recourse to in the treatment of drowning; but the trouble of getting it in action, as well as the experience required for its application, has placed it out of the reach of those who are generally called to such cases. These objections cannot apply to the electro-magnetic machines, which are made fit for use in a couple of minutes, and may be set to work by the least expert in these

matters.

Much has often been said respecting the use of electricity in the treatment of amaurosis. I have seen it employed in the hospital under all forms of this disease, and regret that I have never been able to observe the slightest benefit in whatever way it has been employed. In deafness, also, it has been greatly lauded, but I have seen little which can bear out the commendations accorded to it by some writers. A great authority, Kramer, indeed, especially cautions us against the rash employment of electricity in deafness, regarding it as an excitant of the optic nerve, and likely to induce most unsatisfactory results. In some cases of partial deafness following quinsy, I fancy that good has occasionally resulted from drawing sparks from the throat and mastoid process. My experience in these cases is, however, too small to allow me to offer any authoritative opinion.

I have thus pointed out the results of some of

our clinical experience in the application of electricity to medicine; and, had time permitted, I should have been happy to have done more, and alluded to other affections in which this remedy has been employed; but I dare not trespass further upon your kindness and forbearance.

But one duty now remains that of taking my leave; and in bringing this, my prescribed task, to a conclusion, permit me to offer my thanks for the kind and patient attention with which these crude effusions have been received. Allow me, moreover, to offer an apology for the imperfect nature of many of the illustrations I have used, and to plead in excuse the harassing nature of the duties devolving upon me during the medical session. Permit me to assure you that I have deeply felt the responsibility attached to the high honour of addressing you in this theatre, and whatever may occur to me in the too often checquered path of professional life, I shall always look back upon having been called upon to deliver these lectures, as one of the highest honours that could have been conferred upon me by the College.

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APPENDIX.

THE following communications merit, I believe, a careful perusal : for the first I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Spencer Wells, Surgeon, R. N. It contains a very interesting account of the results he had observed, both in his own practice and in the hospital at Corfu, from the application of the single pair of plates, and is remarkably corroborative of the observation I had myself made on the therapeutical influence of the single galvanic current in the wards of Guy's. The second communication is important, from the amount of experience it contains in connection with the action of the electro-magnetic current on the uterus. Mr. Dempsey, whose acquaintance with the various branches of experimental philosophy is of no ordinary character, has entered into this inquiry with great zeal, and its results will, I think, be read with interest.

My dear Sir,

A.

24. Belgrave Square, July 16. 1849.

I have much pleasure in communicating, as you request, the results of observations made by myself since the paper I wrote in October, 1847, upon certain sanative effects of Galvanism. This paper was read before the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society, Jan. 11. 1848, and published in the Medical Gazette, May 26. in the same year. It contained a short statement of the results of the application of a simple apparatus, consisting of an oval plate of zinc, from two to four inches in the long diameter, and of a plate of pure silver of the same size, the two being connected by a silver wire soldered to the back of each plate. I drew up the