, if treating amaurosis, apply the positive
electrode to the affected parts, thinking thereby to make them more
positive! I say, suppose I do this same thing, do you not see that, by
the fixed laws of electricity, I necessarily increase the evils that I
would remedy? Do you not see that, by placing my negative pole on the
already overcharged and inflamed eyes, I attract to them yet more of the
electro-vital fluid, and so increase their positive condition and
aggravate the inflammation? and that, by presenting my positive
electrode to the eyes already more or less paralyzed, I repel what
little electro-vitality there was there, and so make the nerves all the
more negative and dead? And yet, I repeat it, this is precisely the plan
of almost all the men who use electricity in therapeutic practice with
any regard to its polarization. They treat a positive disease--rather, a
_hypersthenic_ disease, (for they seldom know anything of the
_electrical_ states of diseased parts), with the negative pole, and an
azooedynamic disease, which is negative, with the positive pole!--all
directly antagonistic to science and success.

But the great mass of physicians, who attempt to treat electrically,
have no knowledge either of the electrical condition of the various
forms of disease, nor of the distinctive and peculiar effects produced
by either pole of the artificial current; and consequently all their use
of this powerful agent is entirely empirical--merely haphazard
experiment.

I may have raised an inquiry a few moments since which ought to be
answered. I said, in effect, that in treating a positive disease, such,
for instance, as acute, inflammatory rheumatism or acute pleurisy, I
would use the positive pole on the inflamed parts, and the negative pole
on either some healthy part or on a morbidly negative part, if I could
find such. So, too, I said I would treat a negative disease, such as
amaurosis or torpidity of liver, with the negative pole, placing the
positive pole on either some healthy or morbidly positive part. The
query may have arisen, "By placing the one pole or the other on a
healthy part, do you not derange the normal electro-vital action there,
disturbing its healthy polarization?" I answer, yes, for the time being,
I do; and if this disturbing force were to be steadily continued for any
considerable time, the disturbance would produce manifest and serious
disease. But then, a pole or electrode, placed on a healthy