ge,
it returned almost or quite perfectly and with seeming permanency under
the influence of the baths. In the class of cases--and they are quite
numerous--in which impotency (loss of the power of erection) occurs as a
purely nervous symptom in comparatively young men; where its cause is
sometimes purely imaginative, at others the result of early excesses,
the baths are attended with the most gratifying average results. Where
the cause is purely psychical, a very few baths are sometimes sufficient
to dispel the morbid phenomena. Where masturbation or excessive venery
are at the bottom of the trouble, there is always a probability of more
or less organic change in the lower portion of the spinal cord, and
frequently also a secondary enfeeblement of the digestive functions,
which render requisite a long and steadily continued use of the baths.
Patients whose sexual power was intact, who took the baths for other
purposes, have time and again called my attention to their aphrodisiac
effects.

While here the _general_ electric influence is the main remedial agency,
there is no reason why the possible--or, I should say, probable--good to
be obtained from its _local_ influence should not be realized--the less
so that it is so facile to obtain this in the bath, by means of the
surface board. While individual cases will undoubtedly call for
modifications, I have found the following plan to answer best in
certainly more than half the cases that have come under my observation:
The first five minutes of the bath may be occupied by a general galvanic
current of medium intensity, _descending_ where the patient is of an
irritable, _ascending_ where of a phlegmatic temperament. The pole
connected with the foot electrode should now be detached, and the
surface board substituted. The second five or ten minutes may be
consumed by running a galvanic current between the head electrode and
the surface board, the latter applied alternately to the penis, scrotum,
perineum and, where thought best, also to the lumbo-sacral region.
Where, as is usual, the impotency is accompanied by a certain degree of
cutaneous anaesthesia of the penis, but especially where the seminal
secretion is scanty, the board should be positive (ascending current);
where however nocturnal spermatorrhoea, premature discharges (before
coition is possible) or other irritable phenomena characterize a case,
the surface board should be negative (descending current). The head of