Treating With Electrolytic Currents

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

For decomposing and carrying off unnatural growths, as fistula, ficus,

glandular enlargements and other tumors, it is often best to dilute the

electrolytic quality of the galvanic current A B with one or both of

the Faradaic currents, as by taking A C or A D instead of A B. But

malignant and poisonous affections, as scirrhus and other varieties

of cancer, and also cases of infectious virus, demand continually, or

with ut occasional exceptions, the primary galvanic current A B.

[->]In treating these malignant affections, the current should be run

through as short a distance of healthy tissue as possible, yet so as

fairly to reach the diseased part. And whether this part be brought, for

a given time, under the one pole or the other, the opposite pole should

be attached to the long cord, so as to throw the central point of the

circuit, not in the person of the patient, but out on the long cord,

thus bringing the entire organic parts though which the current is

passed on one and the same side of the center, and so, under the ruling

influence of the same pole.



Those diseases which require the chemical or electrolytic currents

should, for the most part, be treated under the negative pole,

particularly those which need the galvanic current A B, and also old

ulcers and chronic irritation of mucus surfaces. Glandular

enlargements not of scirrhous character, and excrescent growths not

poisonous, may often be reduced, and perhaps sometimes cured, under the

positive pole. But my own experience, even with these affections, is

that it is better to treat them under the negative pole until they come

to assume, as sometimes they will, an acute state, when the positive

pole may be used with success. If, however, it appears desirable to

produce a cauterizing effect, this must be done by persistent

treatment under the negative pole of a strong A B or A C current, and,

if the disease be external, with a small pointed electrode.