at
the proportion of doctors to the whole population should be largely
increased--a thing certainly not often to be desired. So much, candor
must concede.

_Second._--It is not quite true that medicines are usually less annoying
to the patient than electricity as _we_ use it. As administered by
others, it is often nearly intolerable. In our hands, on the contrary,
it seldom inflicts any pain or distress, and almost invariably becomes
agreeable to the patient after a very few applications. We have no
occasion to torture our patients in order to cure them. But the cases
are comparatively rare where medicines are not offensive; commonly they
are excessively so.

_Third._--In not a few diseases, and these among the most dangerous or
distressful, the electric current, employed according to the system here
taught, is able to reach, control and cure, with facility, where
medicines are but slowly, and in most instances imperfectly successful,
or fail altogether. This is said, or meant to be said, not invidiously
nor boastingly, but in the candid utterance of a great and practically
demonstrated truth. It is, perhaps, most _often_ exemplified in
neuralgic, rheumatic and paralytic affections. The author is happy to
acknowledge that these diseases are frequently mitigated, and
occasionally cured, by means of electrical treatment administered by
those who know nothing of the system here taught. But the important fact
is, in _their_ hands there is _no certainty_ as to the effect before
trial. Under _this_ system, the kind of effect is as certainly known
before as after the trial, since it can be made one thing or another _at
will_.

Cases are not unfrequently presented of _inflammatory action_, more
especially where it is internal--traumatic cases and others--which the
practitioner finds it impossible to subdue with medicine. But, with a
proper knowledge of the system herein taught, he has at his command a
power with which he can control such cases with almost infallible
certainty, provided he can get access to them within reasonable time.
The same may be said of fevers, particularly those occasioned by
miasmatic or infectious virus. These are often difficult to manage by
the use of medicine, and not seldom prove fatal, in spite of the best
talent and skill which the profession can afford. But the electric
current, rightly selected and scientifically applied, destroys or
neutralizes the virus and restores the normal polarization