the nerve-ends
is comprehensible, as the imbibed fluid reaches them. But,
according to HEYMANN, the peripheral nerve-ends, i.e., the
terminal bulbs of KRAUSE, of the sensory nerves, and the tactile
corpuscles of MEISSNER, become even without this presupposition
sufficiently impregnated with water while in the bath, because
here all insensible perspiration must cease, and in a bath of a
temperature lower than blood-heat transpiration cannot take
place, so that all transudation to the skin being retained
during the bath, those termini are surrounded by moisture and
therefore swell up.

"From this the writer concludes with regard to the effects of
the baths, that all baths in which the electric current produced
by contact of the water with the body preponderates over the
swelling of the nerve-ends, have a stimulant effect, while
those baths where the swelling preponderates over the electric
current, act as a sedative.

"Taking a brief and comprehensive review therefore of the
effects of mineral water baths, we have those resulting from the
temperature, from the contents of carbonic acid and salts, and
lastly from the electric current generated in the bath water;
each effect however resolving itself into an excitation of the
peripheral nerve-ends, which leads in a reflex manner to an
enhancement of the change of matter."

From the foregoing quotation may be realized the importance which is
attached to the electric current in the warm bath. And here let me ask
the question: May not the remedial superiority, in many cases, of the
mineral water bath over the ordinary warm bath be due mainly, if not
solely, to the more abundant generation in the former of electricity? Or
rather, is it not very likely that this is so? And if such is the case,
it would appear evident that the mineral water bath, the electric
properties of which, depending on the chemical changes going on between
the gases and salts of the water on the one, and the cutaneous
secretions and other constituents of the body on the other hand, are to
a great extent beyond our control, must in turn be vastly inferior to a
bath where the electric current is under our perfect control, and can be
modified in intensity, direction and quantity to meet the individual
requirements of every case. And such is the electric bath I am now
describing.

The second difference between the