The Value of Electricity in the Treatment of Insanity

Extract

In the “Journal of Mental Science” for April, Dr. Alexander Robertson has referred to some observations of mine on the effects of galvanism in the treatment of insanity. These observations were made more than ten years ago. The cases chosen were not quite suitable or satisfactory; they were few in number, and the treatment was not thoroughly carried out. Still the results were far from being unsatisfactory; in fact they alone were quite sufficient to satisfy me that electricity, if properly and perseveringly applied in suitable cases, is a powerful means of cure. I am confirmed in this opinion not only by the results of these crude experiments, and others more recently and more carefully performed, but also from the value of electricity in other neuroses to which insanity is analogous. There are few who can deny, at least reasonably deny, that such neuroses as paralysis, chorea, neuralgia, anæsthesia, &c., are benefited in a most decided manner by electricity. There are forms of insanity, as all authorities on the subject affirm, which seem, if they really are not, identical with these neuroses, and it is not at all preposterous to assert that if it does good in one form of nervous disease it must do good in the other.