Page:The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Volume 12.djvu/31



THE introduction of a unit of current strength into medical electricity has been generally approved of in England, Germany, and France. In Germany, Bernhard 1 Eulenburg, 8 and Erb' have, for the past few years, insisted on the necessity of establishing a standard of electrical measurement, while the progress which has been made in this direction in England and France is due chiefly to the warm advocacy of De Watteville in London, and the persist- ent efforts of Gaiffe in Paris. Strangely enough the ques- tion has not received the consideration it deserves at the hands of American physicians.

That much good work has been done in electro-therapeu- tics by neurologists of this country no one will dispute. The more reason, therefore, why they should adopt a method which will enable them to apply electricity, or at least the galvanic current, with scientific accuracy.

The disadvantages of the old, or rather, the present method of gauging the quantity of electric force employed in any one case must be apparent to all who are in the habit of using electricity either for therapeutic or diagnostic 1885. 1 Rosenthal u. Bernhardt " Electrizitatslehre," &c, Berlin, 1884. 1 Deutsche Med. Wochenschrift, Feb. 21, 1884. ' Erb " Elektrotherapie," Leipzig, 1882. 19
 * Read in substance before the New York Neurological Society, Jan. 6,