Positive And Negative Manifestations

Categories: PRINCIPLES OF PRACTICE.
Sources: A Newly Discovered System Of Electrical Medication

Acute diseases are to be regarded as electrically positive, and

chronic affections as negative. The exceptions are rare, if any at

all. Malignant cholera, which is eminently acute, might by some be

considered as an exception. In negative diseases, there is a low degree

of electro-vitality. And it has been remarked by careful observers,

particularly in the Orient, that cholera rages with greatest

destructiveness when no special electric phenomena have for long time

appeared in the atmosphere, and when the artificial electrical apparatus

could be made to yield its sparks only with difficulty, or not at all.

And again, after a thunderstorm, when the electric machine works again

freely, the cholera is also found to abate quickly, and sometimes very

greatly. The inference drawn from these facts has been that the

prevalence of cholera is largely owing to a lack of electricity in the

atmosphere, and consequently to a want of the animal electricity or

electro-vitality in the system of the patient; and thence it might be

concluded that cholera implies a negative condition of the system. I

think there is a fallacy in this reasoning. There appears to me to be an

unwarrantable assumption in confidently attributing the long absence

from the heavens of marked electrical phenomena, and the failure of the

electric machine to give its spark, to an unquestioned deficiency of

atmospheric electricity. Electrical manifestations take place only when

the plus and minus conditions are existing, in relation to each

other, somewhat near, or not very remote; and the visible phenomena

appear when the positive and negative rush together, so as to produce a

polar equilibrium. But suppose a plus condition to exist over a wide

region, then, everything being overcharged, the visible phenomena

would be as rare and as difficult of attainment as if all around were

negative. How, then, can it be inferred, with any certainty, from such

data, that there is a deficiency of electricity, rather than an

excess of it?



I have not treated a case of cholera; but my own impression of it is,

that in the first stage, or during the "rice-water" discharges, the

condition of the system is, as in other acute affections, excessively

positive; but that, as the collapse comes on, it rapidly subsides into

an intensely negative state, thus assuming the chief characteristic of a

chronic condition.



In the above remarks, I would not be understood to indicate any doubt

that the prevalence of cholera is often aggravated or mitigated by

peculiar electrical states of the atmosphere. It appears altogether

probable that such may be the fact; and I should presume that electrical

treatment, properly administered, would be found eminently successful in

this fearful malady.



Again, in chronic rheumatism there might, at first view, seem to be

frequent exceptions to the rule last above stated; but the cases alluded

to are not such. It is often the fact, during chronic rheumatism, that

soreness and severe pain are felt, especially under the presentation of

the negative pole, thus showing that these points require to be treated

with the positive pole. But, in such cases, although the general disease

of the system be chronic and negative, these sore and severely painful

points have, for the time, risen in their electro-vital condition, and

so become acute and positive. But when chronic rheumatism is attended

with only a dull pain, and that chiefly under exercise of the parts,

and with little or no increase of pain under an application of the

negative pole of the A D current, medium strength, and with no swelling,

then the pain, the stiffness and the lameness are all marks of the

negative state, and the parts must be treated with the negative pole of

the A D current, strongly at first, but diminishing in force, from

time to time, as the patient becomes relieved.



Alkaline affections--those causing excessive alkaline secretions--are

electrically positive. Acid or acidulous states are negative.