e secretory as well as excretory organs; that
it furthers endosmosis and exosmosis--by its electrolytic influence in a
physical, by its influence on the nervous system in a catalytic manner,
in short, and by virtue of these properties, that it greatly

ENHANCES THE CHANGE OF MATTER

and incites the various organs to so great an activity as to cause them
to perform in a comparatively brief space of time--say an hour, the work
of several hours. The natural sequence is obvious: _The want of rest--of
sleep, is felt at a correspondingly earlier period._ I offer this as a
probable explanation of the immediate or almost immediate disposition to
sleep. As to the permanent improvement in sleep, where this has been
below the normal standard, it must always be due to the removal of some
morbid condition, and thus belongs among therapeutic results, rather
than physiological effects. It is true that in many instances of
_agrypnia_ we are unable to discover any pathological condition that
would account for this symptom; but the probability is that here there
is a sluggishness of some one or more of the functions, mental or
physical, too obscurely manifested to be discovered by our present means
of diagnosis, yet reached and rectified by a mode of electrization that
traverses and permeates _every_ portion of the body.

If this explanation of the hypnotic effect of the electric bath be not
the true one, it is at least--so far as I know--the first attempt at
accounting for a phenomenon that has been noticed as a result of even
local applications of electricity by many observers, and about the
pretty uniform occurrence of which there can be no doubt.

With respect to the effect on the

TEMPERATURE AND PULSE,

I have made a number of observations, of which I have recorded
twenty-two, made on persons where both were at or nearly at the normal
standard. With regard to the frequency of the pulse, the results were
conflicting and by no means reliable. In the majority of cases there was
an increase, immediately after the bath, ranging from four to eighteen
beats per minute. In others there was no change whatever, and in a few
there was an absolute diminution in frequency; this last I believe
however to be a therapeutic rather than physiological effect,
manifesting itself only where there is pneumogastric asthenia, and
attributable directly to electric stimulation of this nerve. Thus in one