This specific I immediately advertised in a paper printed at Schenectady; but the doctors in the adjacent towns, either never saw it or did not pay any attention to it.
But I was informed that Dr. Lyon, near Lebanon pool, accidentally came across one of the papers, and having a machine, immediately tried the experiment
(for the same disease prevailed there at that time) and had the pleasure of finding it to be no mistake; for he lost not another patient, but directly cured every one
taken with the disease; who, notwithstanding, lost many before he made use of electricity.
These specimens of the inestimable benefit of electricity in a dysentery, may suffice to evince the propriety of using it in all the like cases.
I have never known it to fail of making a cure in any one single instance.
My method hath ever been to pass the shocks from about the navel to the back, a little descendingly; sometimes I have given twenty,
and sometimes thirty or forty very light shocks in the same direction at one time.
The effects that were apparent, have alwasy been uniformly the same in the bloody flux, viz. they would purge directly, and carry off an enormous quantity of blood in the first stool;
but the appearance of blood will be less and less every stool, till all appearance thereof totally subsides.
The electrification may be repeated twice or thirce a day; but then the number of shocks in one day ought not to exceed forty
or fifty, in any case that I have seen; and these shocks must be so light, that if a well man should take them through his arms, he would not feel
them higher than his wrists.
Such a degree of the shock, is what I mean to have understood to be a very light, or a gentle electrification.
I have mentioned it in this place, because it is of the last importance that it be carefully attended to in this disease:
and the more so, if the patient is much exhausted, or in the last stages of the disease, approaching near to death.
Through good fortune, I did not lose any by their taking cold, but it very much endangered some of their lives; wherefore I must enforce the injunction in this place;
be very careful of the least degree of coolness.
Observe, I do not say cold; that point would be fatal; but if you feel cool in the least degree, you are wounded.
This is the only inconvenience to be regretted, in the using of medical electricity.
The blood is attenuated by the shock, and thrown strongly upon the surface, the pores are expanded, and there is no resistance to a cold from
the least external coolness.
The external temperature ought to be on a parallel degree of warmth with the blood in the vessels, or nearly that.
But in five, six or eight days after the shocks are desisted, the pores will begin to astringe, and
by degrees resist the approach of cold as before.
When a disease is removed,
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