electric bath and all other methods of
applying electricity is, that _the bath is the only method by means of
which general electrization can be realized_. In making a distinction in
this respect, it becomes necessary for me to advert more especially to a
method first introduced to the profession in a systematized and
scientific manner by Drs. BEARD and ROCKWELL,[6] and termed by them
"General Faradization." The undoubted good results that have been
obtained from this method--for the details of which I refer the reader
to the latest work of the authors[7]--have caused it to be extensively
adopted by the medical profession, both here and in Europe. It is,
however, not with its results that I have to do at present, but with its
appellation and true nature. General faradization, so-called, consists
of a series of local faradizations, administered during one and the same
seance, until the current has alternately been made to impinge upon and
traverse the entire or at least a large portion of the body. This
cumulative procedure, it is true, approaches general electrization, as
represented by the electric bath, more closely than any of the other
local methods; yet it is not that which its name would imply, and I do
not think it requires argument to make it apparent, that even this
procedure differs vastly from the electric (whether galvanic or faradic)
bath, where the current at one and the same time impinges directly on
every peripheral nerve-end (excepting those of the head and face) and
traverses every part of the body, obtaining--both as to reflex and
direct effects--as a whole that which the method known as general
faradization seeks to obtain by the cumulation of fractional portions.

Having thus, I trust, established the individuality of the bath as an
electric method, I will without further digression proceed to the
consideration of its physiological effects.

The physiological effects of the electric bath may be qualified on the
one hand as either "immediate," or "remote," on the other as either
"transient" or "permanent." Strictly to classify these is impracticable,
and I will therefore be influenced in the order of their enumeration
principally by their importance in a therapeutic respect.

One of the most pronounced as well as uniform, and at the same time
most important, effects of the electric bath, is its property as an

HYPNOTIC.

This somniferous influence, which is to so