Reprinted from The Chicago Medical Recorder, October, 1894. 
VIBRATORY MBDICINB. 
By HUGH T. PATRICK, M. D. 
LECTURER ON NEUROLOGY, CHICAGO POLICLINIC. 
I thought the society might possibly be interested in seeing 
one of the later productions of so-called vibratory medicine. This 
is called a vibrating helmet, the casque vibrant of Gilles de la 
Tourette. It consists of a nickel-plated helmet, in shape much 
like the crown of a derby hat, surmounted by a small electric 
motor, the revolving armature of which is armed with two small 
eccentric wheels. It is the rapid revolution of these eccentrics 
that causes the whole to vibrate. The inside is supplied with a 
number of broad steel strap springs which radiate from the center 
of the vertex and pass almost to the rim, making it possible to 
adjust the helmet to any head, and serving to transmit the vibra- 
tions. I run the motor by means of a storage battery, which en- 
ables me to regulate the number of revolutions, that is vibrations, 
from six to eight to one hundred or more per second, the usual rate 
being about fifty. The length of the sittings is five to fifteen min- 
utes, and their frequency three to six times a week. Be it under- 
stood that this is in no sense an electric treatment. The current 
never reaches the patient, the battery being used simply as a 
means to obtain the mechanical result. 
The history of vibratory therapeutics is very briefly as follows: 
In 1877, Mortimer Granville, of London, began to experiment with 
a percuteur, a rapidly vibrating hammer run by clock work, and 
used for percussion over painful points, along the spine, etc. He 
has since improved and elaborated it and now uses electricity as 
the motive power. He published nothing until later. 
In 1878 Vigouroux1 tried the effect of vibrations upon the sub- 
jects of hysteria at the Saltpetriere. He used an enormous tuning 
fork mounted on a sounding box about a yard high and set in vibra- 
tion by a fiddle bow, and he found he could remove the hemi- 
anethesia and contractures of hysterical patients the same as 
Charcot had done with the magnet and metals. One case of tabes 
Chicago Medical Society, September, 1894. 
‘Progres Medicale 1878, p. 747; 1880 p. 730. 2 
was treated by introducing his legs into the sounding box and his 
lightning pains were relieved. 
The following year Schiff arrived at like conclusions from pure- 
ly theoretical grounds, although he had seen the experiments of 
Vigouroux. In 1880, Boudet de Paris,2 a physician and electrician 
applied vibrations locally, employing an electric tuning fork, ap- 
plied to the painful point by means of a small arm terminating in a 
disc. He relieved migraine and similar troubles and in normal in- 
dividuals succeeded in from eight to twenty minutes in inducing a 
pronounced local analgesia. He found the results more positive 
1, when the disc was applied directly over the branch of a nerve, 
and 2, where the tissues were not too thick and rested upon a firm 
base, as about the head. He thought though, that the vibration of 
the brain itself might play a role in the production of the results 
achieved. Boudet’s article was followed by a claim of pri- 
ority by Granville who then wrote several papers3, and in 1883 ap- 
peared his book on Nerve Vibration and Excitation abounding in 
ingenious but untenable theories and gratuitous assumptions, or at 
least, in theories and assumptions that cannot be proven in the 
present state of our knowledge of nerve physiology and pathology. 
The essential point is that he claimed a considerable success in the 
treatment of various painful and other nervous affections. I may 
add that I called on Dr. Granville some four or five months ago, 
2Progres Medicale, Feb. 5, 1881. 
3Lancet. Feb. 19, 1881. Brit. Med. Jour., March 11, 1882. Ibid., March 
10, 1883. 3 
and he told me that the percuteur was still in successful operation. 
Up to this time the subject had been approached from a pure- 
ly theoretical standpoint. Mortimer Granville was led up to his 
experiments by a consideration of the manner in which cold relieves 
pain and passed on, by way of Newton’s doctrine of concords and 
discords and other discoveries in physics, to the conclusion that the 
effects of his rapid tapping were due to “the extinguishment of a 
morbid set of vibrations by the superimposition of another, incom- 
patible or discordant set of vibrations.” Vigouroux had imagined 
an hypothesis of vibrations to account for the various phenomena 
of metallotherapy and hoped to find support for it in the effects of 
sonorous and mechanical vibrations and Boudet of Paris simply 
continued these experiments. Now, however, the departure was to 
be from clinical facts. 
Charcot had frequently called attention to the fact that many 
subjects of paralysis agitans experienced considerable relief during 
a railway journey or omnibus ride, a relief which continued for 
some time after the termination of the trip, and he suggested a 
theraphy founded on this fact. In accordance with his suggestion 
Dr. J£gu caused to be constructed a “vibrating chair,” which is in 
constant use at the Saltpetriere and which has been found to afford 
great relief in many cases. The patients after a treatment lose 
their troublesome sensations of burning, prickling and other pares- 
thesiae, and the feeling of general discomfort; they feel lighter, 
less rigid and walk better. 
Pursuing the theme still further, but recurring to the ideas of 
Mortimer Granville and Boudet of Paris, Gilles de la Tourette, 
with the aid of M. Larat, a skillful electrician, constructed this 
vibrating helmet. The two apparatus were made the subject of a 
lecture by Charcot in 1892, which revived the memory of some 
earlier efforts in the same direction which had fallen into oblivion. 
Gilles de la Tourette reviews the subject in the Nouvelle Icono- 
graphie de la Saltpetriere for 1892, which, so far as I know, is the 
latest news on the subject. I visited him and M. Larat last 
January, when they informed me that the helmet was in constant 
use, with satisfaction to the patient and physician. 
It is claimed for the helmet that it cures or relieves neuralgias, 
migraine and other headaches, and the distressing cephalic paresthe- 
sia of neurasthenics; that it has succeeded in these affections whpn 
all other means, notably electricity, had completely failed ; that 
it is a general sedative and calmative, an efficient hypnotic and 4 
effective in some cases of melancholic depression. My own expe- 
rience is, as yet, too limited to allow of positive deductions as to 
its practical value, but I shall take pleasure in reporting later, 
whether my results are gratifying or the reverse. I feel safe, how- 
ever, in saying that the helmet is something more than a therapeu- 
tic toy and a means of suggestion. I was obliged to discontinue 
its use in one case of nervous exhaustion because of a burning sen- 
sation it occasioned in the occipital and cervical regions and a gen- 
eral feeling of discomfort and vibration extending along the entire 
spine and which continued three to four hours after the stance. 
On myself, if used too long, it produces a lightness in the 
head with a slight sensation of nausea and vertigo. One patient 
fell asleep during the second application which he has continued 
to do about each alternate time since. Another who had been suf- 
fering exceedingly with headaches two or three days out of each 
week, so severe as to almost incapacitate him for all work had no 
severe headache during the first three weeks of treatment. 1 then 
went out of town for a few days, and on the day of my return he 
had a severe headache which the helmet relieved for a few minutes 
only. He has had none since, a period of three weeks. In 
another case the benumbing effect was so pronounced, whether on 
the peripheral nerves or sensorium I do not know that the helmet, 
gradually displaced by its vibration, finally slipped off the patient’s 
head and fell to the floor before he was aware of it. It was re- 
placed, and the same thing occurred again except that this time I 
caught it before it could fall. 
A consideration of the modus operandi of the apparatus is 
aside from my object this evening, but I may, perhaps, say that in 
addition to the influence of rhythmic vibrations upon the sensory 
nerves, consciousness and psychic processes, it has occurred to 
me that this vibration of the cranium and its contents might be 
looked upon as a massage of the brain. I am well aware that this 
proposition has a rather startling sound, but the nutrition of mus- 
cle fiber is promoted by rubbing, kneading and percussion, the 
several structures that go to make up a joint are coaxed back to a 
normal condition by the various mechanical procedures of Swedish 
movement, and it has seemed to me not altogether unreasonable to 
suppose that the circulation of fluids in the brain and the nutritive 
processes in cell and fiber might be promoted by this gentle agita- 
tion. 
Venetian Building.