industrial progress,
and very few take the trouble to get at facts which are easy enough
to be had with a little painstaking. We are glad to see so much good
material brought together as we find in these two well-filled volumes.

_Electro-Physiology and Electro-Therapeutics: Showing the Rules and
Methods for the Employment of Galvanism in Nervous Diseases_, etc.
Second Edition, with Additions. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1861.

At a time when the partition-wall between Jew and Gentile of the medical
world is pretty thoroughly breached, if not thrown down, and quackery
and imposture are tolerated as necessary evils, it is agreeable to meet
with a real work of science, emanating from the labors of a regular
physician, concerning the influences exerted by electricity on the human
body, both in health and disease.

Electricity is one of the great powers of Nature, pervading all matter,
existing in all mineral, vegetable, and animal bodies, not only acting
in the combinations of the elements and molecules, but also serving as a
means for their separation from each other. This imponderable fluid or
power, whatever it may be, whether one or two, or a polarization of one
force into the states + and -, is one of the most active agencies known
to man, and although not capable of being weighed in the balance, is not
found wanting anywhere in Nature. It courses in great currents beneath
our feet, in the solid rocks of the earth, penetrating to the very
interior of the globe, while it also rushes through our atmosphere in
lurid flashes, and startles us with the crash and roar of heaven's
artillery. It gives magnetic polarity to the earth, and directs the
needle by its influence; for magnetic attraction is only an effect of
the earth's thermo-electricity, excited by the sun's rays acting in
a continuous course. Both animal and vegetable life are dependent on
electric forces for their development; and many of their functions,
directly or indirectly, result from their agency.

If this force controls to a great degree the living functions of our
organs in their healthy action, it must be that it is concerned in those
derangements and lesions which constitute disease and abnormal actions
or disorders. It must have a remedial and the opposite effect, according
as it is applied.

Is such a gigantic power to be left in the hands of charlatans, or shall
it be reserved for application by scientific physicians? This is a
question we must