Transactions of the American Medical Association Volume 17 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ON THE RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. S. LITTELL, M. D., EMERITUS SCBOKON OF WILLS BOSPITAL FOB THE DISEASES OF TOE EYE Ami LIMB, PHILADELPHIA. READ BEFORE THE ASSOCIATION AT ITS MEETING IN BOSTON, JUNE, 1866. VOL. XVII.?6 ON THE RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. The influence of electrical fluctuations as a cause of disease is known to some of my friends to have long occupied my thoughts, and on several occasions I have endeavored?vainly as I supposed?to invite to it the attention of my medical brethren. My unexpected appointment, therefore?for though a delegate to the Association1 it was not in my power to be present at its meeting? as a committee to report on this subject, I regard as a proof that so far from having been a mere "vox clamanlis in deserto," with no assenting response, my humble efforts have not been so entirely overlooked as I had imagined; and I accept it with pleasure as affording at once a larger auditory, and insuring for the views which I have to present a more formal and considerate hearing. Happy if I shall succeed in exciting the interest of the profession, and awakening such a general spirit of inquiry and reflection aa may lead either to their rejection or to their fuller development and confirmation. It is easier to indulge in conjecture and to frame hypotheses than to observe closely and reason correctly, and hence in every age, crude and unfounded assumptions have retarded the progress of science. Medicine, a branch of knowledge in which from its very nature?conversant as it is with the living organism whose ultimate workings no eye can penetrate?direct experiment is always difficult and often impossible, constitutes no exception to the truth of this remark. It...