ON THE 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS TO 
THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
BY 
S. LITTELL, M. D., 
EMERITUS SURGEON OF WILLS HOSPITAL FOR THE DISEASES OF THE 
EYE AND LIMB, PHILADELPHIA. 
READ BEFORE THE ASSOCIATION AT ITS MEETING IN BOSTON, 
JUNE, 1865. 
EXTRACTED FROM THE 
TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
PHILADELPHIA: 
COLLINS, PRINTER, 105 JAYNE STREET. 
1866. ON THE RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
The influence of electrical fluctuations as a cause of disease is 
known to some of my friends to have long occupied my thoughts, 
and on several occasions I have endeavored—vainly as I sup- 
posed—to invite to it the attention of my medical brethren. My 
unexpected appointment, therefore—for though a delegate to the 
Association1 it was not in my power to be present at its meeting— 
as a committee to report on this subject, I regard as a proof that 
so far from having been a mere “vox clamantis in deserto” with no 
assenting response, my humble efforts have not been so entirely 
overlooked as I had imagined; and I accept it with pleasure as 
affording at once a larger auditory, and insuring for the views 
which I have to present a more formal and considerate hearing. 
Happy if I shall succeed in exciting the interest of the profession, 
and awakening such a general spirit of inquiry and reflection as 
may lead either to their rejection or to their fuller development 
and confirmation. 
It is easier to indulge in conjecture and to frame hypotheses than 
to observe closely and reason correctly, and hence in every age, 
crude and unfounded assumptions have retarded the progress of 
science. Medicine, a branch of knowledge in which from its very 
nature—conversant as it is with the living organism whose ulti- 
mate workings no eye can penetrate—direct experiment is always 
difficult and often impossible, constitutes no exception to the truth 
of this remark. It is especially applicable to that department 
which treats of the etiology of disease; and much of the uncer- 
tainty and irresolution that prevail on the invasion of any new 
epidemic are rightly attributable to this cause. Theories framed 
in the infancy of science, and transmitted unquestioned from one 
generation to another, are still blindly adopted, and implicitly 
followed, though their inconsistency with facts of daily occurrence 
1 At its meeting in 1864. 4 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
can hardly have escaped the observation of the intelligent and 
reflecting. Nor have the speculations of a later age been more 
rational and philosophical. The most fanciful notions have been 
promulgated even in our own day; which while often inferior in 
ingenuity to their venerable prototypes, do not possess the merit, 
which they really had, of classifying, and, with some plausibility, 
of explaining, the phenomena. Of this kind, among many others, 
is the visionary supposition which ascribes to certain epidemic 
diseases an animalcular origin. If in our reasoning upon this 
subject we could discard the fallacies and prejudices of education, 
with the idle vagaries of imagination, and look at what is passing 
around us in the increasing light which modern investigation is 
shedding upon much that has hitherto been dark and inscrutable, 
we could hardly fail to form a judgment at once more in accord- 
ance with the nature of the animal economy, and the dictates of 
common sense; and our practice on such occasions would not only 
be less tentative and empirical, but simplicity and order would be 
seen, where all is now intricacy and confusion. 
One of these baseless assumptions is the doctrine of atmospherical 
poisons, or miasms, as an ordinary cause of epidemic and endemic 
diseases; a doctrine which has become thoroughly incorporated 
with our literature, and forms a part of daily medical thought and 
expression. In books, in lectures, in conversation—everywhere— 
it is the recognized language of physicians; and those who should 
have the temerity to intimate a doubt of the truth of a tenet thus 
universally admitted, would incur no small risk of having their 
own sanity questioned in turn. And yet, notwithstanding this pre- 
scription and assurance, it is not hazarding very much to say, that 
the opinions prevalent on this subject are not only unsound, but 
are hardly creditable to us as members of a learned profession; 
because they prove that we have neither been careful observers of 
facts, nor been guided in our reasoning by sound principles of 
philosophy. It is a maxim in logic not to assign more causes for 
the production of any given effect than may be necessary for that 
purpose; a restriction we have wholly disregarded in treating of 
subjects which, from their connection with the important matters 
of human life and health, demanded the most careful scrutiny and 
rigid deduction ; and, ignoring the constitution of the animal frame, 
as well as the influence of elements analogous to the nervous force, 
have needlessly invented a different origin for almost every de- 
parture from the healthy state. TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
5 
Modern researches have partially developed the wonderful sim- 
plicity which characterizes all the operations of nature; a divine 
economy, if I may so speak, is everywhere conspicuous; results 
the most diverse and extraordinary are produced by the combina- 
tion in different proportions of a few apparently elementary bodies ; 
and we are warranted in believing that, as our knowledge increases, 
this simplicity will be still more strikingly displayed. Why should 
not the same be true also of the animal economy ? It is a complex 
and intricate structure, composed of many different tissues and 
organs, varying somewhat in their manifestations of individual life, 
but all subjected to the control of a central power—the brain— 
having innumerable prolongations conveying its subtle intelli- 
gences to and from every part; and from any morbid change in 
the action of which manifold deviations from a normal condition 
might, d priori, be anticipated. How much more philosophical, 
then, to recognize the instrumentality of a single principle of 
kindred subtlety and essence, evidently capable of producing such 
change, than unnecessarily to multiply causes, and invoke the in- 
terposition of as many agencies as there are diseases in the 
nosology I We have imaginary miasms—several of them supposed 
to be often contemporary in their existence and even to be operat- 
ing simultaneously in the same individual—for the various exan- 
themata, for influenza, for diphtheria, for cholera, for dysentery, 
for each of many different kinds of fever, for hooping-cough, and 
for every epidemic by which we are assailed I In accounting for 
the phlegmasise, it is true, we are accustomed to veil our ignorance 
and to flatter our vanity under the convenient and comprehensive 
phrase of “taking cold;” an expression, however, to which we 
attach no very definite ideas; and which, in its literal sense, the 
commonest observation shows to be incorrect in most of the cases 
to which it is applied. 
An etiology so multiform cannot be true; and if the abnormal 
consequences may, in very many cases, be more rationally and 
satisfactorily explained through the operation of a single principle, 
it must be abandoned. We are erroneously taught by it to expect 
some diverse effect peculiar to each imaginary poison; whereas 
the diversity and the peculiarity reside not in the external agent, 
but in the different tissues and organs of the system acted upon. 
The poisons thus falsely believed to be admitted into the circula- 
tion are, further, supposed to create a kind of fermentation, or 
change in the blood, and subsequently to break forth in various 6 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
morbid manifestations. Nothing, in my judgment, is more gratui- 
tous and unfounded. On the contrary, I believe that it is upon the 
nervous system, and not upon the blood, that the impression is 
primarily made. The blood derives and maintains its vitality 
through its connection with that system, with the minute ramifica- 
tions of which it is everywhere brought into contact; the nervous 
influence it thereby receives is necessary to its healthful constitu- 
tion ; and when this is greatly impaired, or rudely subverted, it 
loses its property of coagulation, and falls, of course, into a state 
of dissolution; of which we have examples in the passive hemor- 
rhages, purpura hemorrhagica, etc., and a very forcible illustration 
in the case of persons killed by lightning.1 
I have dwelt the longer upon this subject, because few fallacies 
have had greater influence in retarding the progress of medical 
science than this venerable and stereotyped doctrine of the old 
humoral pathology. It is, I am fully convinced, one of the chi- 
meras handed down to us from days of comparative ignorance, 
when physicians, unacquainted with the laws of life, and unaccus- 
tomed or unwilling to think for themselves, received with even 
more docility than at present, the reveries of those who assumed to 
perform that duty for them; and were too often content with 
empty assertion and idle speculation, instead of requiring on the 
part of their teachers accurate reasoning founded on a close obser- 
vation, and careful collation of facts. Their ideal creation—for 
it is nothing more—thus consecrated by time and general adoption, 
has taken so firm a hold on the popular mind, accords so well with 
vulgar prejudice, and cuts the Gordian knot of so many difficulties 
which perplex superficial inquirers, that it is, perhaps, vain to hope 
it will soon be abandoned. “We talk,” says Dr. Adams, “of the 
extermination, extirpation, and eradication of a poison, till at last 
we reason upon it as if there were really roots which we were to 
destroy, and at least a certain quantity of some substance which 
we have the power of discharging from the system.” Nothing is 
more common, even at the present day, than to hear of this blood- 
poisoning, and the consequent necessity of its elimination when 
1 Sir Henry Holland, in some interesting reflections on this subject, pertinently 
observes, in the true spirit of a philosopher, “ We cannot trace diseases with cer- 
tainty to this source, but how rare are the instances in which we can infer their 
real causes I The actual void of knowledge justifies our seeking them through 
all the new agencies which physical science may disclose, and none is more likely 
to afford successful results than that now before us.”—See Notes and Reflections. 7 
TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
speaking of diseases—erysipelas, for example—in which nothing 
could possibly have been introduced from without; and yet, not- 
withstanding this universal agreement and reception, the hypo- 
thesis has no foundation in fact, is unsupported by anything like 
satisfactory, or even plausible argument, and is, in a word, a mere 
phantasy of the imagination, an intellectual ignis fatuus, which 
deludes us, indeed, with the semblance of knowledge, but enshrines 
no truth, and serves no purpose but to mystify and mislead. 
The analogy between the nervous energy and electricity, first 
observed by Galvani, has been abundantly demonstrated by Dr. 
Wilson Philip, Magendie, and other physiologists, in their cruel, 
and often wanton, experiments on animals. The results, indeed, 
were so extraordinary as to induce in many minds the presumption 
of their actual identity; for nervous communication having been 
interrupted, it was found that the processes of digestion, respiration, 
and circulation were, for a time, performed as usual under the in- 
fluence of electricity. Among its earliest discovered effects was 
the power of exciting muscular contraction in bodies recently dead. 
Later researches — those of Matteucci, Du Bois Raymond, and 
others—attest the presence of electricity in the most minute por- 
tions of muscular or nervous fibre, its evolution in currents during 
muscular contraction, and the different direction of those currents 
in relation to the longitudinal and transverse section of muscles. 
Its remedial agency, though still insusceptible of any very definite 
application to practice, has long been known; and with these and 
similar facts adapted to awaken curiosity and to direct inquiry, it 
is surprising that the possible pathological consequences which 
might reasonably have been expected to arise from its deficiency 
in the atmosphere, or its rapid abstraction from the system, have 
not been more generally suspected and investigated. Into the 
question of its identity with the nervous force, I have no present 
intention to enter. Nor is its affirmation or denial necessary to 
the establishment of my argument, which merely requires such a 
mutual relation or affinity, that the condition of the one shall be 
influenced by changes in the quantity or intensity of the other. 
Neither would I be understood as implying that there is not, over 
and above all this, a vital principle, the “breath of life,” “breathed” 
into man at his creation, whereby he became “a living soul,” a 
thinking, accountable, and immortal being. The human soul is 
unknown to us except as manifested through some organization of 
which it is the cause and not the result. It neither depends upon 8 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
matter, nor upon the organization of matter, but is a breath, a 
spirit, a ray of the Divine Being, pure and immaterial; an emana- 
tion from His own Divine Nature, and consequently above all 
modes of matter—simple, indissoluble, indestructible, and eternal.1 
All things— 
“ Speak her nature 
Of subtler essence than the trodden clod, 
Active, aerial, towering, unconfined, 
Unfettered with her gross companion’s fall.”2 
This is a subject, however, which, though deeply interesting, is 
too mysterious and recondite for human penetration; one of the 
“ secret things” belonging to Him whose “judgments are unsearcha- 
ble and His ways past finding out.” I merely desire, in limine, to 
disclaim all alliance between the views here set forth and the gross 
heresy of materialism. Caloric, light, electricity, magnetism, and 
chemical affinity are all now thought to be modifications of the 
same element, and in view of the similarity of effect, it is no un- 
warrantable conclusion that under another modification that ele- 
ment may constitute the vis nervosa also. Between electricity and 
the imponderable, ethereal, mobile, and invisible quality which we 
call the nervous force, all physiologists admit that there exists a 
certain agreement and connection which involves reciprocal action. 
A remarkable proof of their close analogy, if not a strong pre- 
sumption of their substantial sameness is afforded by the existence 
of several species of fishes furnished with an especial organization 
for electrical purposes, the action of which is dependent on the 
nervous centres ; varies with the extent of that connection and the 
health of the animal; is under the control of the will; and is capa- 
ble, when the fish is attacked or annoyed, of exhausting the nerv- 
ous power by a continued series of discharges, to a degree sufficient, 
in some instances, to occasion its death.3 
Mr. Milton, while he agrees with Muller in rejecting the idea 
that the nervous power is identical with electricity, thus expresses 
himself in regard to the relation which subsists between them :— 
“Everything seems to point to the conclusion that there may be 
the same relation between electricity and the vital power as between 
1 Archdeacon Manning. 2 Young. 
s The shock communicated by the Gymnotus Electricus, in countries where it 
attains a greater size than with us, is sufficiently strong to disable temporarily 
large animals, and even horses are with difficulty induced to enter rivers in which 
this fish abounds.— Wild Scenes in Venezuela. By Ramon Paez. 9 
TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
electricity and magnetism, or between heat and motion; that is, 
under certain circumstances, the one becomes the other. The frame 
is so charged with weak electricity, or with some force capable of 
being directly affected by electricity, that possibly every drop of 
serum may contain a certain portion, and the contact of two atoms 
highly charged with this force, one secreted by the male, and one 
by the female, may be productive of the same sort of change as 
ensues when the balance of electricity is restored by a thunder- 
storm, and result in the production of an atom filled with vital 
power, limited in its action and form by the nature of the parents 
which produce it; as distinct in its properties from the two atoms 
which formed it, as an atom of calomel is from one of chlorine or 
mercury, but, unlike the chemical atom, incapable of resolution 
into its primary constituents.”1 
What other rationale, it may be asked, can be given of the phe- 
nomena attending the act of generation, and of the nervous exhaus- 
tion which follows; so great, as in some of the insect tribes, to ex- 
tinguish the ephemeral life of the parent, and even to prove fatal 
in man ?2 
The electrical fluid is the great agent in most of the operations 
of nature. In her inorganic domain it is the probable cause of all 
the chemical, and also of much of the mechanical change which we 
behold around us; for being the principle of cohesion in bodies, to 
its absence—synonymous with disintegration and decay—may be 
attributed, in part at least, what has been poetically described as 
“The Voice of Time,” which 
“ The Pilgrim oft 
At dead of night ’mid his orisons hears 
Aghast * * * * disparting towers.”3 
1 The Stream of Life on our Globe. By J. L. Milton, M. R. C. S. 
2 A case of this kind once came under the observation of the writer. The per- 
son had been married about a week. Indeed, instances of death from this cause 
have occurred both in man and the larger mammalia. Some physiologists believe 
that every organized being has a certain portion of irritability originally imparted 
to it, and that its life will be long or short as this is slowly or rapidly exhausted. 
If the coupling of insects be prevented either accidentally or purposely, it is pos- 
sible to prolong the period of their existence, and at least to double it. In like 
manner, if an herbaceous plant, such as the mignonette, which dies down at the 
end of a year, have its flowers carefully cut away as soon as they appear, the plant, 
instead of becoming an annual, continues to live through the winter; and if the 
same operation be repeated throughout the following year, our mignonette will 
soon become a ligneous vegetable—a real tree ; and from that moment the duration 
of its life is unlimited.—Phipson. Utilization of Minute Life. 
3 Dyer’s Ruins of Rome. 10 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
The electrical condition of the surface of the earth is undergoing 
incessant fluctuation, owing partly to differences of temperature, 
the radiation of heat, etc. etc.; and as M. Becquerel has shown that 
electricity, positive or negative, is developed whenever the mole- 
cules of bodies are deranged from their natural position, the chemi- 
cal changes thus induced must be a fruitful source of variation in 
the electrical strata of the atmosphere. Modern science has demon- 
strated that a vast electrical belt encircles the globe, giving polarity 
to the magnetic needle; and, as a fluid so ethereal and unstable 
cannot be inactive or inoperative, is necessarily concerned in the 
production of many phenomena now unknown and unsuspected. 
Since, moreover, its four points of greatest magnetic intensity are 
constantly changing their position, those in the north going from 
west to east, and those in the south from east to west, the whole 
magnetic system of the earth is also in perpetual oscillation. Ac- 
cording to Mr. Fox, even the direction of the metallic veins has 
been influenced by the direction of the magnetic meridians; for it 
has been observed that almost all the metallic deposits in the world 
tend from east to west, or from northeast to southwest. It has 
hence been inferred that “ magnetic currents may have influenced, 
and still influence, the direction of life, food, soil, water, and the 
distribution of plants and animals.”1 
In the vegetable kingdom electricity performs, if possible, still 
more important functions; not only producing, in conjunction with 
its analogous agencies of light and heat, conditions favorable to the 
germination and growth of plants, but quickening them into life, 
and thus becoming the efficient instrument of their development 
and of the productions which they severally yield. Its intense and 
rapid passage, as in the lightning stroke, immediately kills the 
largest tree; and a very slight shock sent through certain plants 
will, we are told, speedily cause their leaves to droop, and as cer- 
tainly, though more slowly, extinguish their vitality. The approach 
of an electrified conductor to the Mimosa Pudica, or Sensitive 
Plant, produces no apparent effect, but if sparks be taken from it, 
the leaflets will shrink and close, as they do from mechanical con- 
tact. Its more steady and quiet operation on vegetable life is 
equally remarkable. An electrical circle has been formed by wires 
running under the beds of a garden, and the result is said to have 
been greater vigor and rapidity of growth in the plants which they 
1 Milton. TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
11 
contained. It evidently performs the part of a general stimulant, 
which, when in moderate quantity, as it usually exists in the atmo- 
sphere, is not only salutary in its effect upon vegetable life, but 
actually necessary to its healthful condition. The disease which 
lately attacked the potato, and produced such great distress among 
those who depended largely for their food upon that esculent, has 
been attributed, with much probability, to its deficiency. 
A principle so influential in its action upon vegetable life, so 
subtle, so fluctuating, and so universally diffused, might d priori, 
have been supposed capable of exerting a very important influence 
also over the higher organization of the animal economy. Its pre- 
sence, in a certain degree, might not irrationally have been pre- 
sumed necessary for the continuance of life, and the healthy per- 
formance of all the functions. The conducting power of the nerves 
had been proved by the physiological experiments just alluded to; 
and their anatomical organization, demonstrating that they are 
tracts of medullary matter, affords convincing proof that while they 
reinforce or intensify the impressions which they receive, and by 
the nervous power which they also elaborate, preside, to some ex- 
tent independently, over the capillary circulation, and the processes 
of absorption, digestion, etc., this conduction is, in reality, one 
principal office which they discharge. Indeed all the circumstances 
of structure, arrangement, and action would naturally lead us to 
regard the brain and the whole nervous system as an organized 
apparatus, through the medium of which electricity, modified and 
restrained by certain laws, is made subservient to the purposes of 
existence; in other words, as a vital electrical or galvanic machine, 
by means of which that element, developed in the processes of re- 
spiration, digestion, and assimilation, is appropriated and distri- 
buted in accordance with the wants of animal life. What we should 
thus have supposed probable, is found to be true in fact; electricity 
when present in excess exciting the functions and exalting vitality, 
while a contrary effect is produced by its subtraction or deficiency. 
In a state of health and mature existence, when all the functions 
are vigorously performed, and the power of resisting noxious 
agencies is greatest, the disturbing influence of such fluctuations is 
slight; but under other circumstances they become a frequent and 
potential cause of disease. We have all experienced the feeling of 
energy and elasticity which is imparted by what is termed bracing 
weather, •when the air is dry and cold; and can recall more strongly 
still, because of its unpleasantness, the sensations of chilliness and 12 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
discomfort when the atmosphere, loaded with moisture, has become 
an active conducting medium, and its injurious operation is further 
increased by the agency of cold ; which, under such circumstances, 
has a depressing, instead of a stimulating, or an invigorating effect. 
The nervous system of some susceptible individuals is readily 
thrown into commotion by an approaching thunder-storm. I have 
one patient, for many years the victim of an annual catarrh, whose 
sufferings are always greatly aggravated by the occurrence of 
thunder and lightning at any time during the paroxysm; and have 
recently attended another—a singularly intractable case of retinitis 
occurring in a strumous constitution—in which relapse was almost 
sure to follow under such circumstances. Rheumatic, neuralgic, 
and paralytic persons, and those who have lately suffered from 
sprained or fractured limbs, can predict with unerring certainty an 
impending atmospherical change j1 and the evening exacerbations 
which we observe in fevers are partly owing to the same cause; 
the system in its disturbed and debilitated condition being unable 
to bear, without suffering, electrical changes which would have little 
or no perceptible influence in a state of health. The pain of rheu- 
matism, neuralgia, and the uncomfortable sensations accompanying 
catarrh, are in like manner, and partly .for the same reason, all ag- 
gravated at the approach of evening,—something being no doubt 
attributable also to nervous exhaustion through the excitements 
of the day. 
The following observations of Professor Laycock, of Edinburgh, 
evince a near approximation to the true theory on this subject; 
and accord also with the remark of Sir Henry Halford, that if he 
ventured to name any particular periods in the twenty-four hours 
at which changes most obviously take place both in health and 
disease, he should fix upon the hour of two or three in the after- 
noon, and the corresponding time in the night:— 
“In the first place we find that the atmospheric tides attain their 
maximum and minimum at certain hours of the day; for there are 
1 It is worthy of remark that these effects are chiefly produced in the meteoro- 
logical changes which precede a storm ; when the rain or snow actually begins to 
fall, the electrical equilibrium is restored, and if the vascular system has not be- 
come involved, neuralgic pains and uncomfortable sensations subside. The 
effect of a thunder-storm in inducing acidity and coagulation of milk is familiar 
to every one; meat in like manner has been observed to become sooner tainted; 
and it has been observed to influence also the incubation of eggs, at least when 
hat process is attempted by artificial heat. TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
13 
tides in the circumambient atmosphere, as well as in the circum- 
ambient ocean; and therewith there are also changes in the elec- 
tricity of the air, and the magnetism of the earth. From 8 to 10 
A. M. and P. M. the barometer is at its maximum height; the elec- 
tric tension is at its maximum too; and there is also the greatest 
maximum variation east of the magnetic needle at the same hours. 
From 4 to o o’clock A. M. and P. M. the barometer is at its mini- 
mum, and so is also the electric tension. The respiratory move- 
ments, and, of course, the activity of the circulation are likewise 
in connection with these hours. About 4 or 5 o’clock in the morn- 
ing, with a minimum temperature, a minimum electric tension, and 
a minimum height of the barometer, there is also a minimum con- 
sumption of oxygen. Farther, I have ascertained by frequent 
inquiry, that sleep generally comes on about that hour after a 
feverish and restless night; and, what is more remarkable, the 
statistics of death in York show that the chances are in the pro- 
portion of 3 to 2 that the last sleep—the sleep of death—will occur 
at that hour.”1 
It is these changes, moreover, consequent upon the withdrawal 
of the sun’s rays, by which the dew is precipitated, and the con- 
ducting property of the air thereby increased, which render ex- 
posure at this time so dangerous in certain districts of country— 
as in the Maremna and Campagna, where the surface of the earth, 
owing to internal causes, may also be negatively electrical, and in 
the so-called malarious localities generally—and not, as is com- 
monly supposed, the greater prevalence on such occasions of 
miasmatic exhalations. At a later period of the evening, when 
the dew has actually fallen, the atmosphere, being drier, is less 
penetrating, and exposure consequently is somewhat less injurious. 
The early morning air, though charged with the ascending dew, is 
less deleterious, because, among other reasons—its greater density, 
etc., whereby more oxygen is breathed—it acts upon a body in 
some measure invigorated and refreshed by sleep; but its influ- 
ence, in debilitated states of the system more particularly, is never- 
theless prejudicial; and hence the recommendation to fortify the 
stomach by a previous meal, the prescription of “ bitters,” quinia, 
etc., which act by imparting temporary energy to the frame. The 
extreme sensibility to electrical fluctuations of the affections which 
are purely nervous, is a subject of common observation. Every 
1 London Medical Gazette, vol. 38. 14 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
physician must have noticed the greater frequency of attacks of 
nervous asthma, in persons subject to that complaint, before a 
change of weather. The epileptic paroxysm occurs most frequently 
in the night, and though this may, perhaps, be explained in part 
by the temporary suspension of the will in sleep, it is not unreason- 
able to attribute it, in some degree, to the electrical changes which 
take place at that period; especially as we know that some persons 
subject to this malady are only affected at the vernal and autumnal 
equinoxes, when those changes are greater than at other times. 
Rheumatism and neuralgia hardly excepted, there is not a disease 
in the whole catalogue, the phenomena of which are more obviously 
in harmony with the electrical theory than those of idiopathic 
epilepsy. The periodical accumulation of excitability and its ex- 
haustion by the paroxysm forcibly recall the circumstances attend- 
ing the experiment of the Leyden jar. 
The familiar expression of “ taking cold,” which is supposed to 
account so satisfactorily for many of the ills to which flesh is heir, 
may be mentioned as another example of such influence. This is 
commonly owing, not to variations of temperature, as is generally 
believed, but to disturbances of the electrical equilibrium, of which 
those variations are the effects or accompaniments. It is not un- 
usual for individuals, especially those of tender age, to retire in 
apparent health to rest, in a comfortable room and bed, and to 
awaken after some hours with a sore throat, or a paroxysm of 
croup; and we have all known persons to be attacked with these 
and other complaints said to arise from “cold,” who have been 
closely confined for days or weeks to apartments, the air of which 
has been steadily maintained at an elevated temperature. They 
could only have been affected, therefore, by changes in the elec- 
trical condition of the atmosphere without, and these would be 
felt with the instantaneousness of thought, however the individual 
might be situated and protected. 
The rationale is substantially the same when indisposition is in- 
duced by sleeping on the damp ground, exposure to a draft of air, 
too long continuance in a cold bath, sitting in wet clothes, etc.; 
under such circumstances the system parts with its vital electricity 
more rapidly than it can be generated without disturbance, and 
the popular phrase is sufficiently expressive of what has occurred. 
“When we take into consideration,” says Mr. Craig, “the prin- 
ciples here advocated, viz: that electricity and nervous force are 
identical, that the electricity evolved from the air in the lungs, and TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
15 
that separated from the ingesta during assimilation, is that which 
supplies the vital electricity to the nervous system, and that any 
cause which hinders the supply, or suddenly, and to a great extent, 
withdraws it after being supplied—there is here an appreciable 
combination of causes which will injuriously affect the system : 
taking cold will thus be an easily comprehensible idea. The escape 
of heat—that is, the withdrawing of electricity from the body—is 
understood to be taking cold. The abstraction of vital electricity 
from a person whose nervous system has nothing to spare, will 
cause derangements that will be developed in some form of disease; 
the nervous currents in such circumstances, acting on a secreting 
gland, may be insufficient to elaborate from the blood those con- 
stituents which are required to form the various secretions; and in 
this manner may the secretion be imperfectly eliminated, and the 
depuration of the blood incompletely effected; and the retention 
of those elements which ought to have been given off will give 
rise to diseases which result from the vitiation of the fluids of the 
body.”1 
The effect on the gravid female of certain atmospheric conditions 
has long been observed. “Cold, rainy weather, and low, damp 
miasmatic localities,” says Professor Gilman, “have been recognized 
since the days of Hippocrates as disturbing pregnancy and causing 
abortion. To the influence of the atmosphere is to be attributed 
the frequency of abortion, or other mishap in pregnancy by which 
some years are signalized.”2 The probable explanation is, that the 
expenditure of the nervous energy, in the reproductive process, 
renders the system more liable to be affected by electrical changes, 
the influence of which is increased by the greater conducting 
power of the atmosphere in the places and seasons mentioned. 
Insane persons, on the other hand, have always been observed to 
be in a remarkable degree insensible to atmospherical vicissitudes, 
as well as free from epidemical influences; and this exemption is, 
no doubt, due to the habitual exaltation of cerebral action in 
their case. 
“Beyond all doubt, electric disturbances in the atmosphere pro- 
duce visibly what are often the forerunners of disorder. On the 
8th of May, 1831, the air in the neighborhood of Algiers was so 
1 On the Influence of Variations of Electric Tension as a Cause of Disease. By 
William Craig, Esq., Surgeon, Ayr. 
2 Notes to the American edition of the Dublin Practice of Midwifery. 16 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
full of electricity that it appeared to be on fire. Luminous points 
issued from the ends of the hair and the tips of the fingers of the 
officers. All those exposed to this air suffered from spasms in 
their limbs, and weariness. Any considerable fall in the barometer, 
which is accompanied by a change in the electricity, produces in 
many persons a lassitude, followed by restless or uneasy sleep, or 
frequent and laborious breathing. Sir Henry Holland remarks 
that the mere dryness of east winds will not explain the aching 
and languor they produce, and expresses his opinion that the 
sirocco is a current of negative electricity. Dr. Ure, in a paper 
read before the Royal Society, stated that the effects of negative 
electricity in the air, as observed in the long room of the Custom 
House, were vertigo, fulness and tension about the head, quick and 
feeble pulse, and defective circulation in the legs and feet.”1 
These, and a host of similar facts, may be adduced to prove that 
there is nothing improbable in the hypothesis that, under circum- 
stances of predisposing or concomitant influence, general in their 
operation, or affecting individuals only, pathological consequences 
of far greater gravity, variety, and extent, may be produced from 
the exhaustion of nervous energy by the subtraction of vital elec- 
tricity from the system, through changes in the external distribu- 
tion of that fluid; especially when those changes, owing to opera- 
tions on the surface, or in the interior of our planet, are of greater 
magnitude and longer continuance than usual; and that the im- 
paired innervation thus induced may be the proximate cause, not 
only of the exanthemata and most other forms of fever, congestive 
and otherwise, but also of cholera, diphtheria, influenza, hooping- 
cough, erysipelas, dysentery, the idiopathic phlegmasise, etc. etc. 
Among the circumstances alluded to as affecting individuals, and 
thus giving efficiency to electrical fluctuations, may be enumerated 
fatigue, fasting, loss of sleep, hemorrhages, the depressing passions, 
the exhaustion produced by long-continued heat, the prevalence of 
moist weather, warm or cold, atmospherical changes, and whatever 
tends to debilitate the system and exhaust or diminish nervous 
power. 
To my mind the conclusion is irresistible, that an element which 
pervades all nature, and sustains so important a part in all her 
operations; which is so analogous to the nervous force that it may 
be substituted for it in the performance of its appropriate func- 
1 Milton. TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
17 
tions; which, when in usual quantity, maintains the organism in 
healthy action, and stimulates or destroys, according to the degree 
of its excess; must, by its deficiency or subtraction—especially in 
debilitated states of the system, and when aided by any cause 
tending of itself to depress cerebral action—exert a far more po- 
tential influence for evil. 
The long continuance, in various degrees and combinations, of 
heat, cold, dryness, and humidity, or the marked predominance of 
any one of these conditions, will determine the character of the 
prevailing diseases. A hot and dry summer, for instance, will be 
nosologically distinguished by affections of the alimentary canal. 
A higher grade and longer continuance of heat, producing a greater 
degree of exhaustion, and occasioning by its reflex action a strong 
tendency to inflammation of the stomach, liver, and their associated 
organs, is the predisposing cause of yellow fever. In the early 
autumnal months, the stimulus of light and caloric being lessened, 
■while the system, exhausted by the previous heat, remains weak 
and impressible, and therefore easily affected by electrical changes 
—the influence of which is promoted by various meteorological 
circumstances, as cold, humidity, etc.— intermittent and remittent 
fevers, in which the pathological condition is rather congestive than 
otherwise, chiefly abound. The cerebral functions are impaired, 
the several processes by wdiich nervous force or vital electricity 
is supplied, are either suspended or less efficiently performed; in- 
nervation is lessened, vascular congestion takes place, and, reaction 
following, the usual febrile phenomena are developed; which as- 
sume an intermittent, continued, or adynamic form, according to 
the intensity of the cause and the degree of the pre-existing de- 
bility. A peculiarly raw and penetrating condition of the atmos- 
phere precedes and accompanies influenza, a disease which ordi- 
narily attacks persons of feeble power, and is characterized by 
excessive nervous disturbance and prostration; while an open, wet, 
and variable state of the weather, such as we frequently have at 
the approach of winter, is favorable to the production of the exan- 
themata, typhoid fever, erysipelas, etc. The reaction occasioned by 
a higher degree of cold—the air being dry, and having, therefore, 
little or no conducting power—is salutary and invigorating. 
The manner in which this state of negative electricity is induced 
is very clearly set forth in the following remarks by Mr. Craig:— 
“Foremost among the agencies which abstract caloric or elec- 
tricity from the animal body may be placed that universally 18 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
diffused element—water. More especially does it operate thus when 
it is being changed into vapor. When water is assuming the form 
of vapor it absorbs an immense quantity, and it is during this pro- 
cess that portions of the earth, and the objects on it, are, for the 
time being, deprived of a large amount of electricity. Now it is 
on the principle that evaporation withdraws from the animal 
economy the electricity which is evolved during the vital opera- 
tions of digestion, respiration, etc., that injurious influences are 
exerted so generally, especially on the predisposed, as are sufficient 
to cause epidemic and wide-spread disease. In tropical countries 
the rain falls in much larger quantities than in countries of a higher 
latitude, and it has all to be raised again by the process of evapo- 
ration ; it is the solar heat radiated from the earth, and from those 
bodies which are placed on it, that provides the heat to raise the 
vapor. It is when this evaporating process is going on that elec- 
tricity is carried up; while the earth, with the objects on it, is to 
a certain extent deprived of electricity. 
“So constantly is humidity associated with the existence of en- 
demic and epidemic disease, that it may be stated, as a general rule, 
that in proportion to the amount and rapidity of evaporation in 
any given situation, so will be the extent and virulence of pesti- 
lential disease. In all speculations on this hitherto dark subject, 
whatever has been conceived to be the cause of epidemic disease, it 
is always supposed that humidity contributes to its virulence, and 
is indispensable for its full development. Hence it is found that 
diseases are most prevalent in situations where water is most easily 
and most copiously generated—in valleys, on the banks of rivers, 
near shallow marshes, in the vicinity of mangrove plants, and 
wherever a favorable condition of the surface exists to accelerate 
the process of evaporation. The rainy season, or rather immediately 
after it, is well known to be the most sickly in tropical climates.” 
In estimating the influence of this deficiency in the quantity of 
electricity in the atmosphere, sufficient weight, I repeat, is not gene- 
rally given to the circumstances which favor its operation; or, in 
other words, to the predisposing causes. These may be briefly 
stated to be thermometrical and hygrometrical conditions on the 
one hand, and, on the other, whatever tends to enfeeble and exhaust 
the vital power. The air which, when dry, is an excellent non- 
conductor, becomes, when charged with moisture, an actively con- 
ducting medium; and in this state of things the nervous energy is 
abstracted from the body more rapidly than it can be generated TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
19 
without cerebral commotion and disorder; the innervation is con- 
sequently lessened ; the vessels of some organ or tissue predisposed 
to disease, lose their tone, and, becoming dilated, admit the red 
globules of blood; congestion ensues, followed by reaction as an 
instinctive effort to repair the mischief which has been inflicted; 
inflammation is set up; and various morbid aberrations are the 
result. The intense heat of our summers, by the over-stimulation 
which it induces—and which by its reflex action is in itself a fre- 
quent cause of disease—is always enervating and exhausting. This 
may not be immediately felt so long as the stimulus continues to 
be supplied, but when this is withdrawn or greatly abated, before 
invigoration takes place under the reaction from the cold of a later 
period, the system, obeying the natural law which governs the dis- 
continuance of an accustomed stimulus, falls into a state of depres- 
sion corresponding to the previous elevation, and becomes a ready 
prey to the atmospherical changes just alluded to. 
It is to variations in the quantity of electricity usually present 
in the atmosphere, produced by operations on the surface of the 
globe or within its interior, and from their proximity to the surface, 
or the conducting capacity of the soil, affecting some localities more 
than others, acting upon constitutions thus impaired, that the dif- 
ferent epidemics which have desolated the earth are, in my opinion, 
to be attributed. 
It is a matter of common observation that our winters occur in 
cycles of cold and of mild weather of indefinite continuance; and 
that the latter are marked by the prevalence of diseases of an ady- 
namic type. Through one of these we appear to be now passing; 
and the remark is frequently made that, since the visitation of the 
cholera more particularly, depletory measures are not so well borne 
as formerly. Such being the case, it may easily be conceived that 
under strong predisposing and exciting influences the brain, acting 
in particular individuals with less than ordinary vigor, and hence 
endowed with less capacity of resistance to morbific agencies, may 
be suddenly discharged of its nervous energy, without any appre- 
ciable lesion being discoverable after death. Instances of this kind 
are said to have occurred during the late epidemic of “spotted 
fever”—especially among children, who, owing to their immature 
or unconfirmed viability and the greater proportional development 
of their nervous system, were most frequently its victims—in which 
the whole course of the malady occupied only a very few hours. The 
vital power was ruthlessly assaulted in its very citadel; the brain 20 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
and spinal marrow, unable to throw off the morbid impression upon 
other parts, owing to the prevailing asthenia, become themselves 
the seat of disease; and when the attack was less suddenly fatal, 
congestion of that organ ensued, followed by all the symptoms of 
nervous oppression and disturbance; terminating in a few cases in 
resolution and recovery, but far more commonly in cerebro-spinal 
meningitis and—death. 
But it is not always, nor, happily for mankind, often indeed, that 
the morbid movement which originates in the brain, expends itself 
upon that organ. This takes place only under the existence of 
strong asthenic tendencies. It seems to have received such a direc- 
tion in the “spotted fever” which prevailed in New England during 
the early part of this century. In the Middle States, owing to some 
climatic changes, the determination was to the lungs, and the 
malady assumed the guise of typhoid pneumonia; while in the 
western part of our country, then almost in its primeval condition, 
it was known as the “Cold Plague,” from the severity of the rigor 
caused by the congestion of the portal circle. Here, then, we have 
the same cause acting upon predispositions engendered by circum- 
stances modifying its operation, producing apparently very differ- 
ent results. Instances occurred in some localities during the late 
epidemic also, in which the chill was the most prominent symptom, 
evincing thus less implication of the brain and greater congestion 
of other organs.1 
The epidemic cholera furnishes another and apposite illustration 
of the manner in which disease is produced by great exhaustion, or 
abstraction of the nervous power. Under the operation of its ex- 
citing cause—which, as will be presently shown, has been almost 
demonstrated to be deficient electricity—the innervation is greatly 
lessened or suspended; but owing to some predisposing influences 
affecting the nerves of organic life, the determination is chiefly to 
the mucous membrane of the intestinal canal; the capillaries of 
which lose their tone, and permit the serous portion of the blood 
to flow unrestrained through their myriad apertures.2 
1 This feature, as stated in the daily papers, was especially observable in some 
parts of New Jersey, as in the neighborhood of Long Branch. 
2 This disease, also, or one that is essentially the same, sometimes prevails epi- 
demically under a more simply congestive form, as in that singular modification 
called in Persia, Tab i Ghash, or “ Fainting Fever,” which is described by Dr. Bell 
as “an ague which never comes out;” and for which he recommends bleeding in 
.the cold stage as the chief and almost only reliable remedy. It appears to have TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
21 
The view which I have taken of this subject is not, as I have 
already intimated, wholly speculative. The diminution of mag- 
netic power during the prevalence of cholera has been ascertained 
by direct experiment. Mr. Mather, of South Shields, England, 
states that in 1849, when cholera of a very fatal character was 
epidemic in his neighborhood, he found, as the result of numerous 
observations carefully made, that a magnet which ordinarily car- 
ried two poundsand ten ounces, would, when the atmospheric indi- 
cations were nearly at their worst—the air being saturated with 
moisture—sustain only one pound and ten ounces; the degree of 
its attraction varying with, and being in inverse proportion to, 
the violence of the disease. 
The same year the number of deaths in Paris from this pesti- 
lence rapidly increased until the 8th of June, when they amounted 
to six hundred and twenty-three. On the evening of that day 
there occurred a thunder-storm of unusual severity, and the cholera 
immediately began to decrease; by the 18th of the month there 
was a daily report of one hundred only; and at its close the mor- 
tality had fallen to thirty. 
Mr. Craig, to whose essay on the Influence of the Variations of 
Electric Tension as a Cause of Disease, I have above referred, and 
whose remarkable agreement in opinion and argument with the 
views here set forth—abundantly fulfilling the Scriptural require- 
ment of two witnesses—goes far to establish their truth, refers in 
fuller detail to the observations of M. Andrand, made at the same 
time and place; and also to similar experiments performed at 
Glasgow. In a communication to the French Academy, dated 
July 10th, after stating that his machine was very powerful, that 
gentleman continues: “I have remarked that since the invasion of 
the cholera I have not been able to produce on any occasion the 
same effect. Before its occurrence, in ordinary weather, after two 
or three turns of the wheel, brilliant sparks of five or six centi- 
metres in length were given out. During the months of April and 
had many features in common with onr “ Cold Plague,” an algid form of conges- 
tive disease, in which, as I have been informed by my relative, the late Dr. Littell, 
of Ohio, he found an emeto-cathartic—the sulphate of magnesia with the tartrate of 
antimony—the most successful treatment. Sporadic cases of this kind, unattended 
with any disturbance of the alimentary canal, or any of the other symptoms which 
usually characterize the disease, were not infrequent on the first invasion of the 
cholera in this country, and were among the most intractable examples of the 
malady.—Eustwiclc’s Journal of a Diplomate's Residence in Persia. Vol. ii. p. 32$). 22 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
May, the sparks, which were obtained with great difficulty, have 
never exceeded two or three centimetres, and their variations 
accorded very nearly with the variations of the cholera. This was 
already for me a strong presumption that I was upon the trace of 
an important fact I was endeavoring to find. Nevertheless, I was 
not convinced, because one might attribute the fact to the moisture 
that was in the air, or to the irregularities of the electrical machine* 
Thus I waited with patience the arrival of fair weather, and to my 
astonishment the machine, frequently consulted, far from showing, 
as it ought to have done, an augmentation of electricity, has given 
signs less and less sensible; to such a degree that, during the days 
of the 4th, oth, and 6th of June, it was impossible to obtain any 
thing but slight cracklings without sparks. On the 7th of June 
the machine remained quite dumb. This new decrease of the elec- 
tric fluid has perfectly accorded with the renewed violence of the 
cholera, as is only too well known. For my own part, I was more 
alarmed than astonished; my conviction was complete. At last, 
on the morning of the 8th, some feeble sparks reappeared, and 
from that hour the intensity decreased. Towards evening a storm 
announced at Paris that the electricity had re-entered its domain ; 
to my eyes it was the cholera which disappeared with the cause 
that produced it. The next day I continued my observations; the 
machine at the least touch rendered with facility some lively 
sparks; and in the five days following, the mortality in Paris fell 
gradually from 667 to 335.” 
“A gentleman in Glasgow, during the prevalence of cholera in 
that city in 1849, informed me,” says Mr. Craig, “that he had an 
excellent electrical machine, which at all times yielded large sparks 
of electricity with the utmost facility. He was very much in the 
habit of using it, and was well acquainted with the science. He 
stated that at the time above specified, when cholera prevailed, he 
had the utmost difficulty in producing the slightest sparks, not- 
withstanding the rubbing, and heating, and brisk turning of the 
machine. As it was no part of this gentleman’s object to trace any 
relation between this low tension of terrestrial electricity and the 
cause of cholera, he took no notes nor dates as to the time when 
the peculiarity began and when it went off. 
“From the observations of these two gentlemen, it is evident 
that there was a connection between the low state of terrestrial 
electricity and the existence of cholera. In the one case the evi- 
dence was quite unconnected with any idea of theory, and in the TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
23 
other case there were no definite notions entertained by M. 
Andrand regarding the nature of the connection between cholera 
and the diminished tension of electricity. He evidently connects 
the cause of cholera with the amount of electricity existing in the 
air, as he remarks that ‘he felt with joy that the vivifying fluid 
was returning to the atmosphere.’ 
“I consider that these facts are very conclusive in support of the 
theory here advocated. They distinctly indicate that the electric 
condition of the mineral strata and superincumbent mineral debris 
on which Paris and Glasgow rest, were at the period when cholera 
raged, in a negative or low state of electric tension.” 
Besides the causes concerned in producing electrical changes on 
the exterior of the globe, it is very probable that the electrical 
condition of the surface, and consequently of the objects connected 
therewith, may be affected also by operations going on in its 
interior; and the prevalence of cholera in Sicily, Madeira, and 
Central America—all of them volcanic countries—gives some 
plausibility to the conjecture. A state of igneous fusion is believed 
by many to exist within our planet, and, if such be the case, elec- 
tricity must necessarily perform a prominent part in that mys- 
terious portion of nature’s great laboratory. It tends, as is well 
known, to seek the periphery, rather than the centre of bodies, 
and more will therefore obviously depend upon the activity of the 
conducting power, than the mere thickness of the intervening 
strata; thus furnishing a solution to the question, why some dis- 
tricts suffer severely from such visitations, while others enjoy abso- 
lute or comparative immunity. The air of the Pontine marshes 
near Rome, so fatal to those within its influence, is said to be very 
deficient in electricity, and probably from the same cause. It may, 
however, be remarked, in passing, that the air of marshes, and of 
still-water generally, is more prejudicial than that of rivers, or 
running streams; partly for the reason, that the air saturated with 
moisture, undisturbed by atmospherical currents, and possessing 
therefore a more actively conducting property, lingers upon them 
in unbroken mass long impervious to the rays of the sun; and 
partly because, in the latter case, the motion of the particles among 
themselves, and their friction against the hills, trees, etc., are de- 
veloping causes of atmospherical electricity. It is probable in both 
of these ways that the agitation of the air, by the frequent passage 
of a steamer—itself a powerful hydro-electric machine—increases 
the salubrity of places in its vicinity, or restores it when lost; as— 24 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
to mention a fact familiarly known—has been the case with the 
Schuylkill above the dam at Fairmount.1 
I have dwelt the longer upon this subject in its connection with 
cholera, because if the argument be deemed conclusive in respect 
to that disease—and I do not see how its force can be evaded—it 
will create a strong presumption of the similar causation of other 
epidemical complaints; the procession in all cases being the same, 
though the effect, which is determined by local circumstances, may 
be as various as the tissues and organs acted upon; thus demon- 
strating, among other things, so far at least as its etiology is con- 
cerned, the essential unity of disease. 
While minute and laborious attention has been bestowed on the 
thermometrical state of the atmosphere, its density, humidity, 
dryness, the direction of the winds, etc. etc., few observations have 
been made, and still fewer recorded, of its electrical condition in 
relation to morbid action. That the subject, however, is beginning 
to engage the thoughts of physicians, is evident from the following 
interesting, but unhappily imperfect remarks, which I copy from 
the work of Mr. Milton already quoted on several occasions:— 
“One important point would be to find out if there is any con- 
nection between disturbance in the electricity of the air, and dis- 
order of the health, what this connection is, and to what laws it is 
subject. In order to see if I could obtain any evidence as to this 
question, I selected a very common form of inflammation. As it 
is very painful, patients generally apply soon for relief. A tolera- 
bly long period was chosen, so that the results might not be vitiated 
by any hasty conclusions. Three large hospitals were visited, and 
the books, on being searched, gave for the year 1852 three hun- 
dred cases, and for the year 1853 five hundred and nine. In the 
first year there was a slight but steady rise up to the end of the 
third quarter of the year, when the proportion increased so rapidly 
that in October there were nearly twice as many cases as in the 
highest of the preceding months, and then the number again de- 
clined till the end of the year. The smallest number of cases 
occurred in June, July, April, and January. 
“ In the year following, 1853, the greatest number of cases which 
1 At the time of the cholera which prevailed at Columbia, Pennsylvania, in the 
summer of 1854, the wind blew during several days in a particular direction, 
wafting over the town the air of a marsh saturated with moisture, and impreg- 
nated with animal effluvia. This disease everywhere evinces a preference for the 
great water courses of a country. TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
25 
occurred in any one month took place in July, when there were 
sixty ; a striking contrast to the same month in the year preceding, 
when there were only five; confirming a view I long ago stated, 
that mere heat and cold have in themselves very little to do with 
disorder of the health. Next to July in this year, stand December 
and October, which yield respectively forty-six and fifty-two. The 
lowest number is met with in March, May, June, and August of 
this year, which give an average of less than thirty-two; while 
January, April, and November show nearly half as many more. 
“Now, when examining the tables of the heat, wind, etc., during 
these periods, I could find no changes which at all tallied with the 
variations in the number of cases of disorder; but, on turning to 
the electrical column of the meteorological report, some changes 
were noticed which seem to coincide with those in the amount of 
disorder. For instance, during the first eight months of 1852, 
there was an exceedingly small number of cases; now, during the 
greater part of this time, the number of days on which negative 
electricity was registered is very small indeed. Week after week 
the electricity is reported as positive with moderate tension. In 
the second week in September the number of cases is greater than 
had been noted for a long time; and now the electricity is reported 
negative and very active. Immediately after this there is a fall in 
the number, and the electricity is again marked positive and ac- 
tive. Then, after a slight wavering, a great increase in the number 
of cases is found for many weeks after; and from this time till 
Christmas, the reports give ‘no electricity at all.’” At this junc- 
ture, unfortunately, the clue of the investigation was lost, the 
electrical apparatus having been damaged in a gale of wind, and 
a long time elapsed before it could be put into working order.1 
The meteorological condition of the atmosphere in which influ- 
enza prevails would incline us to assert with confidence the origin 
of that complaint in deficient, or negative electricity; and most of 
the diseases to which I have before alluded are notoriously most 
frequent in seasons of the year when electrical currents and changes 
are greatest, and their injurious operation aggravated by moisture 
and other auxiliary influences. Chief among those in regard to 
whose nature and causation there is the nearest approach to una- 
1 Mr. Milton does not mention the form of inflammation which he selected as 
the subject of his investigation ; and the electrical changes noted were, probably, 
such as occur in ordinary states of the atmosphere, when there is no epidemic 
prevalence. 26 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
nimity of opinion, are the several varieties of autumnal fever. 
They are almost universally attributed to the agency of marsh 
miasmata; but, notwithstanding this general agreement, there are 
many facts utterly irreconcilable with that hypothesis. And even 
admitting that these supposed exhalations—for of their actual ex- 
istence we have no proof—are not altogether innocuous, I am fully 
convinced that they are not an ordinary source of disease, and 
never of those under present consideration. The complaints sup- 
posed to be thus engendered, prevail in seasons when electrical 
vicissitudes are greatest, and the body, debilitated and otherwise 
disordered by the protracted heat of summer, is most sensible to 
their impression; they are often observed where there is no reason 
to suspect the operation of miasmata; where, in fact, miasmata and 
the circumstances which give rise to it do not exist; are evidently re- 
produced by other causes after they have once occurred; and are 
promptly cured by means which eliminate no poison, but merely 
restore the lost tone of the system—frequently indeed by mental 
impressions alone.1 
Were it true that intermittent and remittent fevers owe their 
origin to paludal exhalations, or to miasmata however generated, we 
should naturally expect to find them most prevalent when vege- 
table decomposition is greatest, but a moment’s consideration will 
show the reverse of this is true. In the Middle and Western 
States, and perhaps throughout our country, September is the 
sickliest of the autumnal months; and yet vegetable life still 
flourishes, often in almost undiminished vigor; the foliage pre- 
serves its freshness and verdure, and nature exhibits few symptoms 
of approaching decay. The days, moreover, have become con- 
siderably shorter, the weather cooler, and it is evident, therefore, 
not only that matter for decomposition is not supplied in greater 
abundance, but that the circumstances which concur in that process 
are really less active than they were in the preceding months. 
Those seasons, also, which are characterized by an unusually late 
fall—vegetation being fostered by timely rains, and long unchecked 
1 The modus operandi of quinia ceases on these principles to be any longer a 
mystery ; or rather it involves no greater difficulty than that of all other remedial 
agencies. Its action is simply tonic, or restorative of nervous energy ; whether 
administered in large doses, as an anti-periodic—anticipating exhaustion and 
promptly exalting cerebral power—or, in smaller and oft-repeated portions with a 
view to the production of its less sensible and more sustained operation. The 
same remark applies also to opium, etc. TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
27 
by frost—are precisely those in which autumnal fevers prevail 
more extensively, though, owing to the system being less exhausted 
by heat, of a milder type than under other circumstances. When 
such conditions exist, they are found not only in localities where 
we should expect to meet with them, but also on elevated grounds, 
and often in the very heart of our cities. Facts like these cannot be 
accounted for on the theory of miasmatic exhalation, but receive 
a ready explanation from the known agency of humidity in in- 
creasing the conducting power of the atmosphere, and thus giving 
greater effect to electrical changes. 
That intermittent and remittent fevers prevail epidemically in 
the autumn, and occur only in sporadic cases during the spring, is 
owing to the circumstance that, in the former case, the system, un- 
duly stimulated by the heat of summer, and left in a state of ex- 
haustion and debility by its withdrawal, is less able to resist the 
electrical currents and fluctuations which are the efficient cause of 
their production. Seasons in which the warm weather has been 
unusually protracted, and the winter uncommonly mild, are those 
in which the most desolating epidemics have occurred; for this 
reason, among others, that the system uninvigorated by the reac- 
tion produced by cold, falls a ready prey to the operation of the 
cause which I have suggested—acting, it may be, on a grander 
scale, from fuller development on the surface, or from processes 
going on in the interior of the globe. In some equatorial climates 
—that of Guayaquil, for example, where earthquakes are frequent— 
this is the invariable state of things. The winter is the period of 
almost incessant rain for five or six months’ duration, and the mor- 
tality during the ensuing comparatively dry season, when evapora- 
tion is most active, and internal terrestrial commotion most com- 
mon, is consequently very great. 
The human frame possesses a great power of accommodation to 
external agencies, especially when these are uniform and constant 
in their action. The air of the sea, and, generally, of places in its 
vicinity, though saturated with moisture, is healthy for this reason ; 
for the moisture being universal and invariable, tends to maintain 
the electrical equilibrium, though perhaps at a lower range; while 
the system being less enfeebled and disordered by heat, the atmo- 
sphere cooler and more refreshing, such fluctuations as do occur 
are less sensibly felt. Hence also it is that, in a very rainy season, 
localities which have been the immemorial haunts of fever, become 28 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
comparatively healthy; while upland districts rarely visited by it 
suffer in their turn. 
A remarkable illustration of the manner in which fever was 
developed on a large scale by the sudden abstraction of vital elec- 
tricity from the system, is recorded by Mr. Eastwick in his Journal 
of a Diplomate’s Residence in Persia; the cause being very cor- 
rectly stated by his informant, a lieutenant of engineers. a He 
told me that Suram”—a village of Georgia—“ was very unhealthy, 
and that the year before, out of three thousand soldiers employed 
on the road, one thousand were constantly ill with fever. He said 
the sickness was owing to there being always a cold wind, and a 
bright intensely hot sun. The men threw off' their clothes, and 
were immediately struck down with fever.”1 
A striking instance of a country in which every circumstance of 
climate, soil, and atmosphere might be supposed to unite in the 
production on a grand scale of paludal exhalation, is mentioned by 
Dr. Hooker in his Himalayan Journals.2 The delta of the Soormah 
extends for a distance of eighty miles along the old bed of the Bur- 
rampooter, a river five miles broad, and forms an immense still and 
narrow sheet of deep, clear water, called the Jheels. The area drained 
by the Soormah is scarcely raised above the level of the sea, and con- 
tains about ten thousand square miles. In the dry season the Jheels 
are marshy, but during the rains, which are excessive on the neigh- 
boring mountains, they are entirely overflowed, the water rising to 
within a few inches of the huts which are built along the borders 
of the rivers which traverse it. The soil, sandy along the Burram- 
pooter, is more muddy and clayey in the centre of the Jheels, with 
immense accumulations of vegetable matter in the marshes, consist- 
ing chiefly of decomposed grass-roots and leaves. “ The climate of 
Chaltuc,” says the doctor, speaking of one of the villages, “ is ex- 
ceedingly damp and hot throughout the year, but though sunk 
amid interminable swamps, the place is perfectly healthy. Such, 
indeed, is the character of the climate throughout the Jheels, where 
fever and ague are rare; and though no situations can appear more 
malarious than Silpat and Cachar, they are in fact eminently salu- 
1 Vol. i. p. 83. The momentary shudder which is sometimes felt on going into 
the sunshine in warm weather is caused by the escape, or radiation of vital elec- 
tricity, owing to its affinity with the solar heat; and relapses in intermittent fever 
are often attributed, by the people of the country, to imprudent exposure to the 
rays of the sun. 
2 Vol. ii. p. 263. TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
29 
brious. These facts,” he continues, “admit of no explanation in 
the present state of our knowledge of endemic diseases. Much may 
be attributed to the great amount and purity of the water, the 
equability of the climate, the absence of forests, and of sudden 
changes from wet to dry; but such facts afford no satisfactory ex- 
planation.” Undoubtedly they do not, on the supposition that 
malaria is necessarily concerned in the production of these com- 
plaints; but discard that hypothesis and they receive an obvious 
elucidation on the theory of their electrical origin. Humidity 
alone, when universal and constant tends, as I have said, to pre- 
serve the electrical equilibrium, and the great extent of their sur- 
face gives to the Jheels the character of an inland sea; the steady 
warmth of the weather sustains the vital actions ; while the circum- 
stances mentioned by Dr. Hooker must render electrical vicissitudes 
slight and infrequent, and hence their exemption from the so-called 
miasmatic diseases.1 
Not only are these diseases less prevalent and less severe when 
vegetable decomposition is at its height, but, as I have said above, 
they frequently exist and are often most fatal in localities where 
there is absolutely no vegetable matter to be found, and where, 
therefore, there can be no such decomposition. In illustration of 
this remark a few examples may not be inappropriately cited ; 
though the belief in marsh effluvia is so deeply rooted in the minds 
of men that the strongest possible array of facts will hardly suffice 
to eradicate it. Totally irreconcilable with the theory popularly 
received, they furnish their own solution ; for circumstances—a 
loose soil penetrable and sandy, intense heat, and water within a 
few inches only of the surface—could scarcely be imagined more 
favorable to rapid evaporation, and the consequent production of a 
condition negatively electrical. 
Dr. Ferguson informs us that “in the most unhealthy parts of 
Spain we may in vain, towards the close of summer, look for lochs, 
marshes, ditches, pools, or even vegetation. Spain, generally speak- 
ing, is then, though as prolific of endemic fever as Walcheren, be- 
1 To circumstances not dissimilar may be ascribed the exemption from fever 
of the inhabitants of the Dismal Swamp, in Virginia, and also of the people dwell- 
ing on the large tracts of marsh in Scotland and Ireland, in which peat-moss 
abounds. A similar exemption has been observed in the lower part of the great 
humid river-plain of the Amazon. With the exception of a short period, from 
1850 to 1855, the salubrity of Para was quite remarkable for a city lying in the 
delta of a great river in the middle of the tropics, and half surrounded by swamps. 
— 77ie Naturalist on the Amazon. By Henry Walter Bates. 30 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
yond all doubt one of the driest countries in Europe; and it is not 
until it has again been made one of the wettest by the periodical 
rains, with its vegetation and aquatic weeds restored, that it can be 
called healthy, or habitable, with any degree of safety.”1 
“In the year 1809, several regiments of the British army in 
Spain took up an encampment in a hilly ravine which had lately 
become a watercourse. Pools of water remained here and there 
among the rocks so pure that the soldiers were anxious to bivouac 
among them for the sake of using the water. Several of them were 
seized with violent remitting fever before they could move from 
the bivouac next morning. Till then it had always been held 
among us that vegetable decomposition was essential to the pro- 
duction of pestiferous miasmata; but in the instance of the half- 
dried ravine before us, from the rocky bed of which (as the soil 
would never lie for the torrents) the very existence even of vege- 
tation was impossible, it proved as pestiferous as the bed of a fen.” 
“In August, 1794, after a very hot and dry summer, the British 
army in Holland encamped at Bosendaal and Oosterhout. The 
soil in both places was a level plain of sand, with a perfectly dry 
surface, where no vegetation existed or could exist, but stunted 
heath plants. It was universally percolated to within a few inches 
of the surface with water, which so far from being putrid was per- 
fectly potable. Here fevers of the remittent and intermittent type 
appeared among the troops in great abundance. The soil of Wal- 
cheren is precisely similar. Sir Gilbert Blane describes it as con- 
sisting ‘ of a fine, white sand, known in the eastern counties of 
England by the name of silt, and about a third part clay.’ It was 
after a dry and hot summer, also, that the British army suffered in 
that island from the endemic fever to a degree almost unprecedented 
in the annals of warfare.” 
In some instances this insalubrity appears to be inherent in the 
nature of the soil, independently of all extraneous circumstances. 
The magnetic hills of the southern peninsula of India, especially 
those of Tavachymalle, are adduced by Mr. Craig, from a paper by 
Dr. Heyne in the tenth number of the Madras Medical Journal, 
containing an account of the fever which is endemical there, as a 
remarkable example of the irregularity and inequality of the elec- 
tric tension hence arising. Wherever the iron granite rocks are 
found, which readily fall into a state of disintegration owing to the 
1 Nature and History of Marsh Poison.—Ecl. Phil. Trans. TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
31 
absence of latent electricity—the binding principle in all matter— 
the malignant peculiarity is uniformly met with. 
Instances to the same purport as those related by Dr. Ferguson 
might be adduced in number sufficient to fill a volume, but it is 
hardly necessary to say more in refutation of a doctrine, the incon- 
sistency of which with such well-known facts has already led to 
its partial abandonment by several writers of authority, and the 
substitution therefor of the modified hypothesis of an invisible, 
gaseous, specific, and poisonous emanation from the earth, which 
they call malaria, a term of wider and more indefinite signification, 
which does not necessarily imply either vegetable or animal de- 
composition; a substitution, however, which merely covers our 
ignorance, and does not advance one step in the way of a sound 
explanation. Like its prototype, moreover, it has no foundation 
in fact, and the whole reasoning is therefore inconclusive and 
erroneous. Much talent and ingenuity have been expended on 
this subject; it had become a settled article of medical faith, and it 
is perhaps not surprising that learned and able men should cling 
pertinaciously to a doctrine which they had been early taught as 
one of the first principles of science, willing to accept any modifica- 
tion rather than consent to its total abandonment; and, shutting 
their eyes to almost palpable truth, invest the creature of their 
imagination with various strange and contradictory attributes. 
Thus we are gravely told that it is especially dangerous at night; 
that, lark-like, it loves the ground; is attracted by, and adheres to 
trees; is absorbed by water; transported by the wind, seeking, 
like the eagle, some high nest, etc. etc.; every one of which, as well 
as other properties or laws, may be much more rationally and 
probably accounted for on a very different hypothesis. A single 
example will suffice. 
“You will readily understand,” says Dr. Watson, “how the 
miasmata will roll up and hang accumulated upon the side of a 
hill towards which a current of air sets steadily from or across a 
neighboring marsh. Nay, the poison may be thus blown over a 
hill, and deposited on the other side of it.”1 In illustration of this 
he adduces the following circumstance related by Dr. Ferguson; 
but how much more obvious and reasonable the explanation, that 
the atmosphere of the marsh, charged with moisture and driven by 
the wind, reaches, and with its gravity and conducting power 
1 Lectures on the Principles and Practice of Physic. Vol. i. p. 764. 32 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
already greater than that of the surrounding air, increased by con- 
densation, necessarily overlaps the first hill, while ere it traverses 
the intervening distance, it is resolved, like the luckless prayers 
sometimes offered to the heathen divinities, into thin air, and never 
attains the second! 
“ The beautiful port of Prince Rupert’s, in the island of Dominica, 
is a peninsula which comprehends two hills of a remarkable form, 
joined to the mainland by a flat and very marshy square isthmus 
to windward, of about three-quarters of a mile in extent. The two 
hills jut right out on the same line into the sea, by which they are on 
three sides encompassed. The inner hill, of a slender pyramidal 
form, rises from a narrow base nearly perpendicular above and 
across the marsh from sea to sea, so as completely to shut it out 
from the port. The outer hill is a round backed bluff promontory 
which breaks off abruptly in the manner of a precipice above the 
sea. Between the hills runs a very clean valley where all the 
establishments of the garrison were originally placed; the whole 
space within the peninsula being the driest, cleanest, and healthiest 
surface conceivable. It was speedily found that the barracks in 
the valley were very unhealthy, and to remedy this fault advantage 
was taken of a recess or platform near the top of the inner hill to 
construct a barrack which was completely concealed by the crest 
of the bill from the view of the marsh on the outside, and at least 
three hundred feet above it; but it proved to be pestiferous beyond 
belief. In fact no white man could possibly live there, and it was 
obliged to be abandoned. At the time this was going on, it was 
discovered that a quarter which had been built on the outer hill, 
on nearly the same line of elevation, and exactly five hundred 
yards further removed from the swamp, was perfectly healthy, not 
a single case of fever having occurred in it from the time it was 
built.” 
There is no circumstance, indeed, connected with our autumnal 
fevers ; their endemic, and, occasionally, epidemic prevalence, the 
influence of moisture, the comparative exemption of large cities, 
the agency of winds, trees, water, and a thousand other things 
deemed curious and inexplicable, which cannot be more scientifi- 
cally accounted for on the electrical than on the miasmatic hypo- 
thesis; and the former has the additional advantage of substituting 
an adequate, existing, probable, and recognizable cause, for one 
which rests on no certain foundation, eludes all chemical scrutiny, 
fails to account satisfactorily for the phenomena, and is, to a great TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
33 
extent, if not altogether, imaginary. The objection to this view, 
that disturbances of the electrical equilibrium are of continual 
occurrence, without being followed by such effects as are here attri- 
buted to them, is more specious than sound. It fails, as I have 
elsewhere observed, in not appreciating the consequences of the 
prolonged heat of summer, which, by exhausting the nervous 
energy, leaves the system in the early autumnal months weak, sus- 
ceptible, and predisposed to disease; and it is, moreover, not alto- 
gether true in fact, for intermittent and remittent fevers are ob- 
served, though, of course, much less frequently, at other seasons of 
the year also.1 As winter approaches the invigorating influence of 
cold is felt in the increase of nervous vigor; oxygen is breathed 
in greater quantity with a denser atmosphere: the processes of 
digestion and assimilation being more actively performed, a greater 
quantity of vital electricity is generated; reaction follows the pre- 
vious depression ; and the predisposition subsequently changes to 
other forms of morbid action. It is to this circumstance, and not 
to the destruction by frost, of malarious exhalations, that the cessa- 
tion of our autumnal fevers is to be ascribed. 
I do not deny that gases and foul emanations arising from the 
decomposition of animal and vegetable matters, especially those 
which vitiate the atmosphere of our large cities—where, being less 
exposed to the action of winds, they probably exist in a non- 
concentrated state—are a concurrent and efficient cause of disease.2 
They are often present in a degree sensibly offensive, and cannot 
1 It would seem that during the existence in the atmosphere in an unusual de- 
gree of a principle analogous to the nervous force, or, if the expression be preferred, 
the same principle in a modified form, the functions of the brain are less vigorously 
performed than under other circumstances ; hence the acceleration of the pulse, to 
compensate for its diminished power, the relaxation of the capillaries, both of the 
skin and mucous membrane ; hence the phenomena attending sunstroke, less indi- 
cative of increased action than of depression ; and hence, also, the mental incapa- 
city, the weakness, lassitude, and exhaustion of the physical powers, consequent 
upon the presence of long-continued heat, rendering the system, as has been shown, 
an easy prey to disease of every kind. 
2 There are too many instances on record of the mischievous effects of human 
effluvia more especially, even when inoperative upon the individuals producing 
them, to admit of any doubt on this subject. Thus we are told that at assizes 
formerly held in England, when the jails were in a much worse condition than 
they now are, the persons situated to the leeward of the prisoners who were them- 
selves in usual health, were sometimes attacked by fever of a typhus character 
produced by the foul air which blew upon them. 34 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
be otherwise than prejudicial to health; though not, perhaps, to 
the degree or in the manner generally supposed. For not only are 
they usually of very local origin, and therefore soon diluted by 
dispersion into the surrounding air, but the atmosphere, by the 
generation of ozone—said to be one of the most powerful disin- 
fectants with which we are acquainted—contains within itself the 
means of its own purification. The chief predisposing cause is 
heat, and this, if excessive and long continued, culminates in yel- 
low fever; a disease which is endemic in those countries where 
that condition annually exists, and only requires an atmosphere 
negatively electrical to give full effect to its injurious influence. 
The increased evaporation which takes place along the line of 
junction of land and water, producing more active electrical 
changes, and. perhaps, the greater contamination of the air from 
the embouchure of sewers, etc., account for the first appearance of 
the disease in the immediate vicinity of a river, or of the sea, upon 
which, places subject to it are situated. Yellow fever, as formerly 
observed, is an inflammatory affection which expends its force 
generally and principally on the stomach and collatitious viscera, 
but may also be complicated with inflammation of other parts pre- 
disposed to morbid action. It runs its course with great rapidity, 
and derives its fatality as well from its involving vital organs, as 
from its being engrafted on an exhausted state of the system. 
The crews of vessels who have continued in good health while 
at sea, are often attacked by yellow fever on arriving at ports 
where the circumstances which give rise to that disease exist in a 
high degree—though it may not previously have made its appear- 
ance among the inhabitants, who have been in some measure 
accustomed to their impression—and are unjustly charged with 
having brought it from the places whence they sailed. After a 
voyage during which, from the constant influence of a moist atmo- 
sphere, the vital forces are rather depressed below, than elevated 
above their normal condition, they not only exchange a healthy air 
for one rarefied and impure, but their duties generally become more 
laborious and exhausting; and the system thus predisposed, with 
its energies perhaps further impaired by excesses of various kinds, 
is more readily affected by the electrical fluctuations which are 
produced by the action of the sun upon the land and water. The 
earth, as we all know, receives and radiates far more heat than the 
water, and evaporation, with all the circumstances connected with TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
35 
electrical change and abstraction is more active along the line of 
separation. Vessels which lie at some distance from the shore are 
comparatively exempt, unless they contain within themselves the 
seeds of disease; and hence the notion of the supposed absorption 
of miasmata by water. 
“In tropical regions, the vessels at sea are often attacked with 
severe and deadly disease, although far removed from all kinds of 
miasms and emanations from the soil. The causes which operate 
in such circumstances must arise from the ship itself, or from the 
sea which everywhere surrounds it. Nothing but the vapor of 
pure water can arise from the sea by the operation of heat; and 
the evaporation can never be so copious as it is from burning land 
recently covered with rain. In considering the circumstances of 
the ship itself, we find that it is constructed of wood; and this 
material is a good non-conductor of electricity, and the crew of the 
vessel are thereby nearly insulated. It is well known that a ship 
which is kept perfectly dry is much more favorable to health than 
one which is leaky and always damp. During the operation of 
washing the deck under the rays of a tropical sun, there is pro- 
duced from the great heat of the timber of the deck a very speedy 
evaporation. From a conviction that attention to cleanliness is re- 
quired to prevent sickness on board vessels in hot climates the 
masters take care to institute a regular routine of washing and 
scrubbing. I have heard of vessels which have suffered dreadfully 
from yellow fever while the decks were visited with watery ablu- 
tions many times a day. On the contrary, in those vessels where 
strict attention is paid to have the ship thoroughly dry throughout, 
sickness of the people is much more seldom and more mild.”1 
The rapid evaporation of the water thus thrown upon, and im- 
bibed by the timbers of the vessel, produces a comparatively nega- 
tive electrical condition; and to the consequent abstraction of vital 
electricity from the crew, the sickness is very correctly ascribed. 
It is no valid objection to the electrical theory, that the effect 
does not immediately follow the cause, nor that, in some cases, a 
period nearly definite is observed to elapse after exposure. De- 
velopment into morbid action, though obeying a general law, will 
vary in some measure according to the intensity of the impression, 
the resistance opposed to it, and the nature and force of the circum- 
stances which awaken it into life. Were it not indeed for some 
' Mr. Craig. 36 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
accidental occurrence, that impression might long lie dormant, the 
system accommodating itself without much apparent disturbance 
to a lower grade of vitality. A generally uniform interval will, 
however, be found to exist, for time is necessarily required to pro- 
duce a series of events ending in unequivocal disease. The organism 
has received a blow under which it reels, but does not immediately 
succumb. There is sufficient nervous energy remaining to carry 
on the vital functions for a while, though with progressive difficulty, 
and more or less discomfort. This is the formative, inchoative, or, 
as it has been termed with reference to some supposed action of 
poisonous matter upon the blood, the incubative stage; and is 
continued—the system gradually losing power—until positive dis- 
ability ensues, and the agency of the vis medicatrix is invoked to 
restore through the reaction which it establishes, the impaired 
cerebral functions. 
There is nothing in all this more remarkable than we daily ob- 
serve in the periodicity of fever; which is susceptible of the same 
explanation, and obeys a duration—quotidian, tertian, quartan, 
etc.—corresponding to the strength of the impression and the con- 
dition of the individual. The rationale thus briefly alluded to may 
be stated, where there is no inflammatory complication, in fuller 
detail as follows: Congestion followed by rigor takes place in the 
organs connected with the portal circulation—the liver, spleen, 
etc.—as being those most predisposed to disease; and by means of 
the febrile movement thereby occasioned, the nervous energy is 
not only temporarily restored, but its normal degree actually 
transcended. This, in its turn, is necessarily followed by exhaus- 
tion, and the process is thus indefinitely repeated, until the system 
either yields altogether, or, arousing itself to shake off the incubus 
which oppresses it—aided in most instances by art—resumes its 
healthy action; the severest paroxysm, by the vigorous reaction 
which it induces, being frequently the last. 
The tendency of the other affections to assimilate themselves to 
the type of the prevailing disease, is also what might, a priori, be 
anticipated. The determination in each epidemic, owing to differ- 
ent predisposing causes, inclines to some particular organ or tissue, 
whence it derives its distinguishing characteristic; but this may 
not be in every person the part which especially invites disease; 
other organs in particular cases may be more predisposed to take 
on morbid action, and hence disorders of various kinds coexist; all, TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
37 
however, if not actually originating in the same cause, necessarily 
affected by the same general influence. 
That such diversity of effect should be produced by the same 
morbific cause, constitutes, as has been seen, no proper argument 
against the hypothesis which I advocate. Man, in his ignorance, 
is fond of multiplying causes, but science is daily demonstrating 
the simplicity of truth. In the present instance there is obviously 
no necessity for such multiplication. The human frame is so con- 
stituted, that whatever impairs the energy of its controlling organ 
diminishes, of course, the supply of nervous power to all parts of 
the body; and this defective innervation acting upon the different 
predispositions, may give rise to aberrations as various as there are 
tissues and organs to be acted upon. Thus, in the dermoid tissue 
we may have derangement of the capillary circulation, of the ex- 
halant vessels, or of its secretory apparatus; constituting respect- 
ively scarlet fever, measles, and smallpox; or we may have cholera 
from the same cause directed to the mucous membrane of the 
stomach and bowels; or any one of the phlegmasiae; according as 
the development of latent imperfection, or accidental causes may 
determine. To those, therefore, who consider the complicated 
organism of the human system, it will not appear strange that 
results apparently so different, and yet in reality essentially the 
same, should be produced through the instrumentality of a single 
principle, directed in its morbid manifestations by predispositions 
arising from a variety of circumstances, existing in countless com- 
binations, and involving whole communities, or affecting indi- 
viduals only. 
The remark made by Dr. Brady to Sydenham, “ that no physi- 
cian hitherto has attentively considered the force and influence of 
the atmosphere upon human bodies, nor yet sufficiently ascertained 
the part it plays in prolonging human life,” is true in all its extent, 
even at the present day. For though note has been diligently taken 
of many particulars connected with its more obvious properties, 
the record has been almost useless notwithstanding the labor be- 
stowed upon it, partly because proper comparison has not been 
made with other localities, and legitimate deductions drawn by 
those who framed the tables, but chiefly owing to the fact that its 
more ethereal and imponderable constituents, those which exert the 
greatest influence over the human system, and to the action of 
which the others are merely subsidiary, have been either unknown 38 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
or entirely overlooked. No valuable results will be obtained from 
any observations, however accurately made, in which these are not 
included; and the whole subject, moreover, must be carefully 
studied with especial reference to the prevailing diseases. In 
Scotland there is a journal exclusively devoted to meteorology, 
and it will no doubt give a great and healthy impulse to the culti- 
vation of that branch of science. The editor, Mr. Glaisher, observes, 
in a recent number, that “were the meteorology of our towns care- 
fully ascertained and collated with that of the metropolis, and both 
together with that of the country generally, in a short time we 
should be in a condition to elaborate a clear insight into the meteo- 
rological causes of cholera, influenza, and many phases of disease 
which now burst upon us with the suddenness and devastating 
power of a divine and wrathful visitation.” 
“ When we reflect,” says a writer in the British and Foreign 
Medico-Chirurgical Review, “on the complicated agencies to which 
man is exposed irrespective of the atmosphere, and the marvellous 
complicity of action of the atmosphere itself, operating through 
the medium of heat, light, electricity, magnetism, aqueous vapor, 
and variable mechanical pressure, to say nothing of its more recon- 
dite elements, ozone and miasmata, we cannot be surprised that we 
are yet merely in the dawn of climatological science.” A still 
higher authority, Sir Henry Holland, has the following remarks in 
relation to this subject: “ Little though its influence has yet been 
defined, I believe that the electrical strata of the atmosphere is that 
of all its conditions which has most important and diffused effects 
on the animal economy ; more rapid and pervading than any other; 
and, as one of the vital stimuli, more intimately allied to the func- 
tions of the nervous system. It is that, further, which most closely 
blends itself, either as cause or effect, with all the other meteoro- 
logical changes; producing thereby many of the difficulties already 
noticed in estimating their relative amount of influence. When 
modern science has shown us that every chemical action is attended 
by, if not identical with electrical change ; that the processes of 
vegetation, as well as those of animal life, involve unceasing altera- 
tion in its states; that no two bodies can be present to each other 
of different temperature, nor even separate parts of the same body 
be differently heated, without evolution of this agent; that every 
act of evaporation, or deposition of water on the surface of the 
globe, has similar effect of change, even the spray of a waterfall 
sensibly altering the balance of electricity around it—we may well TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
39 
understand how wide is the circle of these mutual changes, and 
how important in the economy of nature, including in this the 
existence and functions of organic life itself.” 
The manner in which morbid action follows the abstraction of 
electricity from the system, is sufficiently indicated by what has 
been already said, but it may perhaps be made still clearer by one 
or two additional examples; and scarlet fever, as being, in its un- 
complicated form, a familiar instance of a general inflammatory 
affection, will furnish an opposite illustration. This disease, though 
occasionally observed at every season of the year, prevails most 
extensively in autumn and spring—periods during which electrical 
fluctuations are greatest and their influence is promoted by the 
various meteorological circumstances so often mentioned before— 
and, as might be expected, is chiefly confined to children, whose 
power of resisting hurtful impressions is less than that of persons 
of mature age and vigor. The action of the brain and nervous 
system being depressed, or otherwise disturbed by the rapid ab- 
straction of sensorial energy, and their control over the capillaries 
lessened, these consequently become dilated; the circulation through 
them is retarded, and a state of things is induced closely bordering 
on inflammation. This, though general in all the tissues, is more 
particularly observed in the mucous membrane of the digestive 
system, and in the skin; as evinced in the former by the redness 
of the throat, and the projecting papillae of the tongue—sometimes 
also by the occurrence of nausea or diarrhoea—and in the latter by 
the scarlet efflorescence and other symptoms of increased action, 
the predominance of which in this tissue commonly indicates a 
tractable form of the complaint. Meanwhile the brain reacting 
against the morbific agency, separates and transmits the nervous 
energy as before; but there is now a demand for a greater supply 
in order to restore the impaired tonicity of the capillaries;1 this 
restoration is accomplished through the exaltation of its functions 
occasioned by the febrile movement—an action of salutary tend- 
ency when it does not transcend the required limits—and after a 
commotion of greater or less severity, occupying, necessarily, a 
nearly definite period, the system reverts to a state of convales- 
cence. Such is the order of things in scarlatina simplex. In 
the anginose variety the pathological alterations proceed one step 
1 It is this demand, requiring all the ability of the system to sustain it, which 
renders depletion, and other measures producing still further exhaustion, so 
dangerous in the treatment of this disease. 40 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
farther. The circulation through a portion of the capillaries 
is not only retarded, but absolutely arrested; congestion follows, 
and inflammation is set up in the fauces—where, from the laxity 
of the parts, and the exposed condition of the vessels, we should 
naturally expect to find it. In still more aggravated grades of the 
malady, whether owing to the intensity of the cause, feebleness of 
the constitution, or some other circumstance affecting the indi- 
vidual, the powers of life are prostrated, in many instances beyond 
the capability of reaction ; the brain being deprived of its nervous 
energy, is thrown into disorder, delirium or coma ensues; and after 
a struggle of varying duration, death generally closes the scene— 
often supervening in a very few hours. 
The year 1856 presented meteorological conditions favorable to 
the production of this disease; and it consequently prevailed very 
extensively. The winter was excessively severe, and the cold was 
protracted throughout the spring. The early part of the summer 
was very warm, with the coolest August that had been known for a 
long period of time. The autumn was open and variable, and the 
mortality towards its close amounted to more than forty cases a 
week. A few consecutive days of clear, cold, and dry weather 
occurred in the early part of December, and were followed by a 
marked diminution of the complaint—the number of deaths for the 
week following being only thirty. It subsequently became chilly, 
wet, and variable, and the mortality again increased beyond any pre- 
vious example. The whole number of deaths in Philadelphia during 
the year, from this disease alone, was nearly or quite one thousand. 
In New York it amounted to more than twelve hundred. 
The origin of measles may be explained in like manner. The 
difference being, that in scarlet fever the effect of the impaired 
innervation is chiefly seen in the deranged capillary circulation; 
whereas in measles, while it implicates the pulmonary, rather than 
the gastro-mucous tissue, it receives from some predisposing 
cause—perhaps a somewhat greater degree of cold, or the same 
degree acting upon a system less debilitated, as in the spring—a 
determination to a different part of the skin ; probably its exhalant 
vessels. In smallpox another and more secretory portion of this 
composite structure is affected, and hence its contagious character. 
If I were asked what it is that essentially constitutes nervous, 
typhoid, or enteric fever, as it is sometimes indifferently called, I 
would reply, depression of nervous power—it matters little how 
induced, whether by excessive fatigue, enfeebling the action of the TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
41 
brain, or the too rapid abstraction of cerebral force—and, generally, 
as its immediate consequence, congestion of the intestinal mucous 
membrane, through some peculiar predisposition to affection of that 
part. According to the degree of the reaction—by which the brain 
recovers its energy and the membrane its healthy condition—there 
will be, supposing it to be uncomplicated with affection of other 
parts, an open and inflammatory, or an insidious, depressed, and 
adynamic state of things. The morbid action is prone to linger 
long in the glandular structure of the ilium, and other organs may 
become implicated in the progress of the disease; but its essential 
characteristics are briefly stated as above. 
The application of the same mode of reasoning to the phleg- 
masiae is sufficiently obvious. An individual from lying on the 
damp ground, getting wet, or from some exposure in a raw and 
chilly state of the atmosphere—the physical powers being perhaps 
depressed by fasting, fatigue, or some other predisposing cause; or, 
it may be, from undue fatigue alone—becomes unwell, and is said, 
in common language, to have “ taken cold.” More correctly speak- 
ing, the sensorial energy or animal electricity has been abstracted 
from the system with greater rapidity than it could be generated 
without disturbance of the cerebral functions; the effect is felt in 
the diminished innervation of some organ liable from congenital, 
or acquired predisposition, to fall into morbid action; and as a 
consequence, inflammation takes place, either in its parenchyma or 
its investing membrane, as circumstances may determine. 
The exanthemata prevail chiefly in early life, when the nervous 
system is not only predominant and impressible, but there is, more- 
over, from their greater functional activity, a natural tendency to 
affections of the dermoid and mucous tissues; the predisposition in 
after years inclining rather to diseases of the organic system.1 The 
exemption from a second attack, though by no means so general 
as is commonly supposed, increases with the more confirmed and 
vigorous action of the brain; and these diseases, therefore, unless 
there be a strong constitutional tendency, or the predisposing 
causes exist in a higher degree, rarely affect adults. 
When the meteorological conditions are favorable to the pro- 
duction of smallpox, vaccination will confer no immunity; as is 
proved by the occasional general prevalence of what is termed the 
1 In children the exanthemata are frequently ushered in by convulsions or 
coma, and I have known the same thing to happen also in intermittent and other 
fevers; showing the primary action of the morbific cause upon the brain. 42 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
varioloid disease; which attacks alike the protected and the unpro- 
tected. Among the sources of fallacy on this subject, are the more 
confirmed vitality, and different morbid predispositions of later 
life; the infrequent occurrence in a high degree of the conditions, 
remote and proximate, favorable to the generation of variola; and 
the fact that many of the depressing causes which give effect to 
those conditions—want of food, and clothing, neglect of cleanliness, 
impure air, etc. etc.—are, in this country, seldom seen in combina- 
tion; unless it be among our aboriginal tribes, who suffer terribly 
from this scourge. That confidence in the efficacy of vaccination 
has been diminished of late years, it were vain to deny; for its 
advocates, driven from the ground of perfect exemption, have been 
obliged to resort to a modified protection—creating the term 
“ varioloid,” to explain a degree of mildness, which is owing to 
less severity of epidemic influence, improved modes of living, and 
a more rational treatment—and are, moreover, divided among 
themselves as to the necessity of the repeated, and even septennial 
employment of their supposed prophylactic. 
I am far from supposing that disturbance of the electrical equi- 
librium is the sole cause of morbid action. Disease, once induced, 
has, in some instances, the power of self propagation; and often 
originates, moreover, from other causes, operating as well within 
as without the individual; but when it prevails either endemically, 
or epidemically, or in sporadic cases of complaints sometimes epi- 
demic, where there has been no exposure to contagion; and on all 
occasions where it is said to arise from “cold;” its etiology I be- 
lieve to be as I have described. Whatever indeed enfeebles the 
action of the brain and disturbs the innervation, must produce, 
under similar predisposing influences, the same results; for it 
makes little practical difference whether the nervous energy is too 
sparingly supplied, or is too rapidly abstracted. The modus operandi 
is alike in both cases. The impression is primarily made on the 
nervous system, congestion ensues in the vascular tissue of some 
organ—for it seldom happens that all parts of the frame possess 
equal soundness and vitality—and the various morbid aberrations 
of which I have spoken, with imperfect secretions, vitiation of the 
blood from the retention of effete materials, etc. etc., follow in its 
train. Sporadic cases of smallpox which are not traceable to any 
contagious source are of frequent occurrence. Both that disease 
and scarlet fever also, are sometimes produced by the nervous ex- 
haustion occasioned by fatigue alone. Instances of this kind have TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
43 
occurred in my own practice; and in further confirmation, I may 
remark, that Eyplyn states in his Diary, that one of the princes of 
the royal family was attacked by smallpox of a confluent and fatal 
character, after excessive dancing.1 
When the predisposition is wanting, even contagion will be 
nearly, or altogether inoperative; and people are often exposed to 
it with entire immunity. Variola itself, under such circumstances, 
will rarely spread beyond the individual affected; and may even 
give rise to disease of a different kind. The poisonous emanations 
would, therefore, seem to operate, in these cases at least, not so 
much from any inherent, or specific property, whereby the disease 
necessarily reproduces itself, as from their general action in de- 
pressing, or subverting cerebral power — already impaired by 
watching, fatigue, fasting, anxiety, impure air, immature or uncon- 
firmed vitality, and a thousand other circumstances—and the con- 
sequent causation of any complaint to which predisposition existed; 
which, in most cases, would, of course, be that by which the con- 
tagion was produced. Variolous fever alone, without affection of 
the skin, is not uncommon; and I have seen cases of fatal con- 
gestive fever, without the characteristic eruption of smallpox, 
manifestly caused by attendance on the confluent variety of that 
malady. To this inaptitude some of the fallacies regarding vacci- 
nation, and the security which smallpox itself affords against a 
second attack, may not improbably be attributed. The general 
predisposition, individual tendency, the negatively electrical con- 
dition of the air of apartments vitiated by respiration, and other 
depressing influences, will satisfactorily account for much that in 
many diseases is ascribed to contagion. It is very desirable to be 
able to disabuse the minds of people of all really unfounded fear on 
this subject, for selfish apprehensions thence arising, sometimes 
interfere materially with the comfort of families and the welfare 
of the sick; to the extent, not unfrequently, of violating the 
amenities of society, and even extinguishing the charities of our 
nature. 
The subject opens a wide field for observation and reflection, 
and will require on very many topics an entire reconstruction of 
1 The late Bishop Boone, speaking of his narrow escape from shipwreck, in a 
storm which he encountered in a voyage from Aden to Ceylon, observes : “ Our 
last danger was from pestilence, or ship fever. You can have no idea of the smell 
from such masses of wet leather, and decaying clothes, etc., to which we had added 
dead rats and poultry, etc., and, to crown all, three of the crew were taken down 
with smallpox." 44 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
medical opinion. Several complaints now attributed to contagion, 
will be found to spring from a cause which no. isolation could 
evade; demonstrating thus the inutility and folly, as well as the 
mischief of quarantine regulations in regard to many diseases to 
which they are now applied. Not only marsh miasmata and 
malaria, but the whole tribe of atmospherical miasms, with the 
protective virtue of vaccination, and several other long-cherished, 
and widely-adopted opinions, are destined to fall before the more 
rational theory which it inculcates; while it cannot fail to exercise, 
also, a beneficial effect upon practice, in making the preservation 
and restoration of nervous energy a prominent object of regard 
both in health and disease. 
The fiction that there are floating in the atmosphere miasms 
which enter into the circulation by respiration or otherwise, acting 
as a poison to the blood, and severally producing scarlet fever, 
measles, smallpox, etc.—for these diseases often prevail in the same 
neighborhood or household, and two of them sometimes in the 
same person—thus rendering the air we breathe, and which a 
merciful Providence intended to be a life-giving principle to man, 
a magazine of hostile elements warring for his destruction, may 
have appeared clear and satisfactory in the age in which it was 
invented; but, viewed in the light of modern discovery, it is, in 
my judgment, as absurd as I believe it to be unfounded. 
It might, perhaps, be thought that disorders originating in the 
abstraction of vital electricity should be cured by the artificial 
supply of that principle; and this supposition would not be un- 
reasonable if our bodies, instead of being organized living systems, 
were unformed and inanimate machines. In the actual constitution 
of things, however, other morbid actions speedily follow the tem- 
porary relaxation of cerebral or nervous control; inflammation is 
set up; the secretions are imperfectly performed; depuration of the 
blood is not properly effected; and results are produced which can 
only be obviated or repaired in accordance with the laws which 
govern the animal economy both in health and disease. In actual 
practice I have not found electricity, though deserving, perhaps, 
of a more extended employment than it has hitherto received, of 
much value in the treatment of complaints, functional and nervous 
—to which it is chiefly applicable—until the system had been 
brought by other measures nearly or quite to its normal condition, 
and the suspended function only required an appropriate stimulus 
to awaken it into activity. TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
45 
It will undoubtedly often give temporary relief in neuralgia and 
other nervous affections, but the same rule holds good here as in 
other cases. Over stimulation, if unduly protracted, is followed 
by exhaustion ; and the substitution of an artificial for a natural 
stimulus, however great the analogy between them, will necessarily 
cause more or less impairment of that thus superseded or placed in 
abeyance. Dr. Radcliffe, indeed, informs us as the result of his ob- 
servation, that continuous currents of low electric tension, instead of 
possessing the restorative power which has been anticipated from 
them, seem to have a directly paralyzing effect upon that part of a 
motor nerve which is exposed to their influence. As a temporary 
stimulus it is often very useful, but the sanguine expectations 
which have been entertained of electricity as a curative agent have 
certainly been disappointed; and, like many other things good in 
themselves, it has, perhaps, been unduly depreciated; its practical 
application falling to a great extent into the hands of mercenary 
and unprincipled pretenders, by whom, no doubt, much mischief 
has been done. It would, certainly, be rash and unphilosophical to 
assert positively that happier results might not be produced by 
more refined machinery and better modes of application, as pro- 
posed by Duchenne and others. 
I have purposely avoided all discussion of the question respect- 
ing the identity of electricity and the nervous force. The modifi- 
cation which, on that supposition, the former must be admitted to 
have undergone, will be regarded by many, notwithstanding the 
analogy between them, as evincing a radical diversity. Nor, as has 
been observed, is the affirmative assumption necessary for the 
establishment of the theory which I have set forth. It is sufficient 
that there should be such a reciprocal relation, that fluctuations in 
the quantity of the electricity ordinarily present on the surface of 
the earth and in the surrounding atmosphere, should produce a 
corresponding change in the vital or animal electricity belonging 
to the human system ; and this much, I presume, will be admitted 
by all physiologists. 
It is not to be supposed that a theory which allows of no divided 
empire, but seeks to exalt itself upon the ruin of what composes 
so large a part of medical literature, supplies so much of medical 
phraseology, and has exercised an influence so controlling over 
medical opinion, will be received without strong opposition. A 
host of prejudices will start up in arms against it, and may de- 
prive it in many minds, of the consideration which it merits. It 46 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
will be regarded by the indolent as among the novelties which 
disturb their peace; and others unmindful of the fact that correct 
meteorological observations, embracing all the constituent princi- 
ples of the atmosphere, and having especial reference to prevailing 
disease, have yet to be made; and not fully aware perhaps of the 
difficulties attending investigations on the living organism, will be 
disposed to class it with the baseless hypotheses which it aims to 
supplant. Such prejudices and prepossessions should not be per- 
mitted to interpose obstacles to the pursuit, and the adoption of 
truth. If, as I firmly believe, it be founded on fact, it will ulti- 
mately triumph over all opposition; and, if otherwise, it should 
be refuted and rejected. It has been held by me, with increasing 
conviction during the greater part of my professional life, extend- 
ing over a period of more than forty years; and from the clear 
insight which it gives into much that without it would be dark and 
contradictory, I should be happy to impart the confidence which I 
feel, in equal degree to others. 
To my mind it not only harmonizes and elucidates many dis- 
cordant and otherwise inexplicable phenomena, but inculcates a 
rational and conservative practice; and while, by its adoption, we 
substitute a simple, intelligible, and effective etiology for one com- 
plex, contradictory and inadequate, we get rid of much of the 
unfounded theory, false reasoning, and unmeaning phraseology 
which have so long bewildered and disgraced our profession. 
It is certainly more philosophical, and more in accordance with 
the operations of the Divine Author of nature, who produces ef- 
fects the most diverse and wonderful through the agency of a few 
simple elements, to ascribe the causation of the diseases we have 
been considering to a single instrumentality, analogous to the 
nervous force, and capable, from its potent, fluctuating, and all-per- 
vading character, of accomplishing, through the governing organ 
of the animal economy, all that is thus attributed to it; than, like 
the heathen of the olden time, who recognized behind every phe- 
nomenon a god with passions as variable as those of men, to 
create a deity, or assign a different cause for every variety of mor- 
bid action, and people the invisible realms of medicine with as 
many emanations and miasms as there are diseases incident to the 
human frame. 
Notwithstanding all that has been written on the subject of 
malaria, we are as far from any real knowledge of its nature as 
we were when its existence was first announced. We are con- TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
47 
versant, indeed, with its supposed effects; but of its cause and 
essence we are profoundly ignorant. It has baffled all observation, 
eluded all research, and though everywhere, and by everybody, 
regarded and treated as an undoubted entity and a fruitful source 
of evil, is, in my judgment, a myth, a mere phantasm of the im- 
agination, resting, as I have before remarked, on the veriest 
hypothesis. 
It is gratifying to know that the medical mind, so long held in 
the thraldom of authority, is beginning to break the flimsy fetters 
which have bound it, and to assert its prerogative of independent 
thought. I have conversed, of late years more especially, with in- 
telligent physicians from various parts of our country, and have 
found, in many of them, a strong feeling of dissatisfaction with the 
doctrines prevalent on this subject; though they knew of nothing 
better to substitute for them. Contradicted by facts of familiar 
observation and daily occurrence, they are evidently losing their 
hold on the thoughtful and intellectual; and must, ere long, give 
place to views more in accordance with the organization of the 
human frame, and the dictates of a sounder philosophy. 
It should not be forgotten that those by whom these doctrines 
were originally taught, lived before the era of modern discovery, 
when electricity as a science did not exist; when its probable 
identity with light and caloric was unsuspected, and when its action 
upon the animal frame and the marvels of the telegraph were un- 
known. The hypotheses which they invented to combine, har- 
monize, and explain the phenomena which they observed, were 
not behind the philosophy of their age; indeed, they may be said 
to have been far in advance of it, for they have survived many 
other groundless assumptions, both in this and other branches of 
knowledge; and their exposition has been received, and their 
authority unchallenged, almost until now. The fault is all our 
own, because, in our indolence or indifference, we have refused to 
examine the grounds on which their theories rested, and blindly 
adopting their antiquated lore, have stereotyped their errors, and 
cling to them as firmly as though they were rigid deductions drawn 
amid the brighter revelations in physical science which it is our 
privilege to enjoy. No theory of disease, in fact, which does not 
recognize the influence of the atmosphere, as well its sensible con- 
ditions as its imponderable and recondite elements, is properly 
entitled to any serious attention. 
The history of the recently discovered principle called ozone, 48 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
the existence of which, however, it must be stated (such is the un- 
certainty of medical opinion) is still doubted by many—at first 
regarded as electrified oxygen, but now more generally supposed 
to be a peroxide of nitrogen—furnishes a remarkable example of 
the importance and advantage of such researches. Generated by 
the action of electricity on atmospheric air and watery vapor, this 
new and powerful agent, strong in its obvious qualities, and in the 
chemical reaction which it exerts on whatever is exposed to its 
influence, is already considered as one of the most active oxidizers, 
disinfectants, and deodorizers in nature; purifying the air in which 
it is developed, and rendering innocuous the poisonous gases and 
other offensive impregnations by which it is constantly contami- 
nated. It is said to impart to the solar rays the bleaching property 
which they possess, to act as a direct stimulant to animal and vege- 
table life, to play a conspicuous part in the production of various 
important pathological results, and to display, generally, such strik- 
ing therapeutical virtues as cannot fail, if a tithe of what is attri- 
buted to it be true, to render it an efficient agent in the prevention 
and cure of many diseases.1 
Just views of the cause of disease constitute a very important 
step towards its prevention and cure; and, as might be expected, 
the doctrine of electrical agency is fruitful in its practical applica- 
tion ; involving whatever may protect the system against the fluc- 
tuations of this potent and ethereal principle. It supplies us with 
an intelligible reason why in the selection of a country residence 
we should avoid localities the air of which is habitually charged 
with moisture, and its conducting power thereby increased, whether 
owing to the nature of the soil, or the windward vicinity of water; 
and as elevation affords comparative security—the upper strata of 
air being drier—why upland situations, when choice is practicable, 
should, of course, always be preferred. “In the same place,” says 
Dr. Ferguson, speaking of English Harbor, Antigua, “ the malaria 
in the level plain caused continued fever, resembling, and, I believe, 
identical with yellow fever; at the elevation of three hundred feet 
it gave rise to remittent fever, and at the height of five or six 
hundred feet its influence was scarcely felt at all.” It teaches us, 
for a similar reason, not to tarry in, or travel through, insalubrious 
1 The literature of ozone is already voluminous ; but a well-digested, and well- 
written summary of the whole subject will be found in Dr. Gaillard’s Fiske Prize 
Essay. Much of what is ascribed to this principle is probably due to the direct 
action of electricity. TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
49 
regions during the night; to avoid exposure, especially in feeble 
states of health, to the early morning and evening air of the coun- 
try, when intermittent and remittent fevers are rife; and, when 
such exposure is unavoidable, indicates the propriety of sustaining 
the vital powers by a previous meal—during the digestion and 
assimilation of which, the system is employed in generating vital 
electricity—and the exhibition also of some tonic, or stimulant, in 
order to exalt the action of the brain.1 It explains how it happens, 
that in certain seasons and during the prevalence of certain winds, 
situations ordinarily salubrious become unhealthy, while others 
usually sickly become healthful in their turn. It instructs us 
moreover, during the existence of any epidemic, to abstain from 
everything which may depress or exhaust the nervous energy, and 
to maintain the brain in its accustomed, or even in increased vigor, 
as well by the stimulus of hope and confidence, as by the use of 
means which exert their influence more particularly upon that 
organ ; affording thus the probable rationale of the action of various 
prophylactics. Whatever, indeed, sustains and exalts the nervous 
power must necessarily tend to avert disease; and in the autumnal 
season, more especially, when the system, before its reaction under 
the cold of a later period, is left in a condition not unlike that of 
an inebriate from whom his accustomed stimulus has been with- 
drawn, the general prescription or use of some appropriate tonic 
might be expected to prove extremely useful. The same plan 
might be advantageously pursued also during prolonged periods of 
damp and chilly weather, when the air, charged with moisture, be- 
comes actively conductive. The mortality among children,—who 
perhaps do not, as a general rule, receive a sufficient quantity of 
animal nutriment, owing to which the processes concerned in the 
development of vital electricity are inefficiently performed,—as well 
as among the aged and the infirm, might probably be greatly lessened 
in this way. In a late expedition up the Niger, a river so fatal to 
previous explorers, the health of the crew was preserved in a re- 
markable degree—not a single life being lost—by the administra- 
tion of quinia morning and evening, with other hygienic precau- 
tions. Similar testimony is borne by our army surgeons to its 
value when thus employed; and the same plan might be advan- 
tageously adopted by vessels arriving at our own, or foreign ports 
1 The morning air being colder, and therefore denser, than that of the evening, 
a greater quantity of oxygen is breathed; and the brain, invigorated by recent 
sleep, is in a better condition to resist hurtful impressions. 50 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
during the prevalence of yellow fever. It guides us, furthermore, 
to a right practice in many complaints now somewhat empirically 
treated ; warning us to abstain from depleting and other disturbing 
measures, in scarlet, typhoid, and other fevers, where the nervous 
energy is already impaired through the debilitating nature of the 
cause,—inflammation not having yet been set up in any local organ 
—and the subsequent reaction is merely a salutary effort of the vis 
medicatrix to restore the lost balance of the system. A want of 
due innervation being the primary deviation in the train of morbid 
action, it holds out a reasonable hope of subverting certain com- 
plaints in their incipient stage before the vascular system has 
become implicated, by the administration of tonics—quinia, for 
instance, in large doses. And where such implication has already 
taken place, shows—what daily experience confirms—that in in- 
flammation of an asthenic or adynamic character, there is no neces- 
sary antagonism between the simultaneous employment of a tonic, 
and an antiphlogistic treatment. The ultimate effect, indeed, is very 
similar in both cases; we deplete in order, among other reasons, to 
lessen the congestion of the extreme vessels, and we exalt the 
nervous energy to restore their tone, and thus insure their contrac- 
tion. It must be evident, however, that the existing debility is 
often owing to the oppression of some vital organ, the restoration 
of which to its functional activity is the great indication, and the 
means, depletory or otherwise, by which this is fulfilled, are actually 
tonic in their influence, from the relief which they afford to the 
oppressed and struggling organism. In many, perhaps in most 
instances, the patient is not seen at the onset of the disease, when 
nervous depression alone is present. This condition is speedily 
followed by congestion, or inflammation has supervened, demand- 
ing in most cases the preliminary employment .of evacuant and 
revulsive measures. Even venesection is sometimes imperatively 
required under such circumstances. Its importance was strikingly 
illustrated in the treatment of the malady called in Persia, Tab i 
Ghash, or the fainting sickness, which appears to have been merely 
a congestive form of cholera without vomiting or purging; and in 
which, according to Dr. Bell, an English physician, who speaks 
from an experience of two thousand cases, it was the only curative 
means on which, though emetics and cathartics were useful aux- 
iliaries, any absolute dependence could be placed.1 When the train 
1 Dr. Robert Burns, of Frankford, acting upon well-considered theoretical views, 
had the courage and independence to resort to bleeding in the cholera of our own TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
51 
of morbid actions has made still further advancement, and inflam- 
mation of important organs has actually supervened, there can be 
no rational difference of opinion with regard to the judicious em- 
ployment of antiphlogistic measures; though many lives are pro- 
bably lost, or health often irretrievably ruined, by the unfounded 
prejudices which unhappily prevail. Even here also means adapted 
to restore and support the general tone, are, when properly timed, 
often signally useful. In the management of yellow fever, for 
instance, on which medical opinion is still unsettled, early and copi- 
ous depletion by the lancet, to abate vascular excitement and change 
the character of the circulating fluid; calomel in large and frequently 
repeated doses, to relieve visceral engorgement; and these objects 
attained, or in process of attainment, the liberal exhibition of 
quinia, to restore nervous power and the tonicity of the extreme 
vessels, is the practice which—due regard being had to climate, the 
character of the epidemic, and the circumstances of each individual 
case—the exercise, in a word, of that discriminating j udgment which 
distinguishes the physician from the mere follower of prescription 
and routine—would follow by fair deduction from the theory which 
I have set forth. A combined tonic and antiphlogistic treatment— 
prominence being given to one or the other, according to circum- 
stances—is also indicated in the epidemic known as the “ spotted 
fever,” or, more properly, cerebro-spinal meningitis; a disease in its 
intenser form almost necessarily beyond the resources of art. But 
the importance of the parts chiefly affected, its rapidity of pro- 
gress, the impending inflammation, and the almost inevitably fatal 
result of any considerable organic change, would naturally suggest 
extreme caution in the use of tonics and stimulants in its earlier 
stages—especially as the prostration and debility are manifestly 
rather apparent than real—and lead to greater reliance, particu- 
larly in the congestive and comatose cases, on local depletion, 
mercurial purges and alteratives, the hot bath and other external 
derivatives.1 The hypothesis suggested, removes also in many 
diseases—scarlatina, rubeola, cholera, etc. etc.—the dread of con- 
tagion, so mischievous in its consequences to the sick ; and relieves 
us from the supposed necessity of purifying the blood by the 
elimination of an imaginary materies mor bi, though not of remov- 
country, and speaks in high terms of the pleasurable sensations and the relief 
which it occasioned both in his own case and many others. 
1 Dr. Burns informs me that he has successfully employed bleeding under 
apparently desperate circumstances in this complaint also. 52 
RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS 
ing, so far as practicable, contaminations of that fluid which are 
produced during the continuance of morbid action. It suggests 
the necessity of appropriate clothing—that is, of garments com- 
posed of non-conducting materials—as wool and silk—and of other 
precautionary measures in the management of children ; and finally 
admonishes us of the importance, at all times, of preserving the 
vital forces in the best possible condition, and thereby of affording 
to the vis medicatrix full opportunity of accomplishing its recu- 
perative tendencies. 
The theme is a prolific one, and the ideas thus imperfectly ex- 
pressed, far from exhausting the subject, must be regarded as little 
more than suggestive. Much patient investigation and careful 
induction will be required to remove all doubt, and secure their 
adoption by the profession ; but if I have succeeded in creating 
even a presumption of their probability, I have accomplished all 
that I expected to do. Such presumption will lead to further re- 
search and more exact observations than have hitherto been made, 
and these are necessary to enable us to arrive at any certain con- 
clusions. 
The theory, I need hardly say, is not wholly original, for elec- 
trical fluctuations have been conjecturally assigned, with more or 
less confidence, as the cause of several complaints ; but few attempts 
have hitherto been made to show by argument the grounds on 
which such conjecture reposed; and I am not aware that it has 
ever been so fully developed, or has received so extended an ap- 
plication as I have given to it. Dr. Wood, in his Practice of Med- 
icine, states that Sir James Murray maintained in an article pub- 
lished in the Dublin Press, in the year 1844, that the true malarious 
agents are electro-galvanic currents and accumulations, which pro- 
duce disease by disturbing the electrical equilibrium of the body; 
an opinion identical with that which, with wider comprehension, I 
have advocated in the present essay; though by what reasoning it is 
supported by him, I am entirely ignorant, for I have not been able 
to procure his paper. The only monograph1 on the subject with 
which I am acquainted, is that by Mr. Craig, of Ayr, already so 
often referred to; and the copious extracts from which given above, 
abundantly manifest his entire agreement with the general doctrine 
which I have advocated. The leading idea, indeed, once fairly 
1 Since expanded into a volume which I have vainly endeavored to procure in 
this country. 53 
TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
admitted, would naturally lead to a similar train of reasoning; and 
as it was ordained of old that the testimony of two competent and 
unbiassed witnesses should be deemed conclusive in all matters of 
forensic dispute, so the elaborated conclusions of two isolated and 
independent minds, engaged unknown to, and independent of, each 
other, in the solution of the same problem, must be allowed to fur- 
nish, in their singular coincidence of opinion and argument, a strong 
presumption of their substantial correctness. 
A very full editorial notice of Mr. Craig’s paper, which originally 
appeared in the London Medical Gazette, for June, 1851, was pub- 
lished in the North American Medico-Chirurgical Review, for May, 
1857, as a sequel to one of my articles on the same subject. It is 
too long for reproduction in this place, nor, after the free use which 
has been made of the pamphlet, is such reproduction necessary ; 
but room may not be inappropriately given to the general summary 
or recapitulation with which the monograph concludes. It is as 
follows:— 
“ 1st. That heat and electricity are identical, as the one can be 
converted into the other. 
2d. That a large volume of electricity surrounds every primary 
constituent of matter, especially that form of matter which consti- 
tutes the gaseous bodies. 
3d. That animal heat is supported by the electricity liberated 
from the primary constituents of matter during the processes of 
respiration, digestion, and assimilation. 
4th. That electricity is evolved during these processes on the same 
principle as that which is evolved during the action of a galvanic 
arrangement. 
5th. That electricity and nervous power are analogous, if not 
identical, as the action of one can be successfully substituted for 
the other. 
6th. That the majority of diseases are caused either by the sudden 
obstruction, or slow abduction of electricity from the body. 
7th. That a low state of electric tension on the surface of the 
earth, produced either by the operation of evaporation, or some 
occult movement in the great internal currents of the earth, is the 
remote cause of epidemic and pestilential diseases. 
8th. That occasional and ordinary diseases are produced by the 
sudden abstraction or slow subduction of electricity from the body, 
or its sudden elimination during the vital processes. 
9th. That since electricity is so essential to the integrity of the 54 
RELATION’S OF ELECTRICITY TO CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
vital operations, it is indispensable that measures be taken to pro- 
duce its evolution, and to prevent over-radiation. 
10th. That electricity is the source of vitality in vegetable life. 
11th. That electricity is attracted by the fibres of the roots of 
plants; and by the instrumentality of the electric fluid does the 
plant attract its constituents from the soil. 
12th. That vegetables of rapid growth require a large supply of 
electricity to secure their perfection and completion ; and the potato 
is a plant of this kind. 
13th. That the disease in the potato was produced by the want 
of nutrition. 
14th. That the want of nutrition arose from defective electric 
agency. 
15th. That the cause of the deficiency of this agency was those 
abstracting influences which produced low tension of electricity.”