3. Therapeutic Retrospect.

Abstract

At a recent medical meeting in Budapesth, Oct. 22, 1892, Dr. Schreiber combats the view that electrotherapy is suggestion-therapy, though he is obliged to admit the latter to be a potent factor in the use of electricity. Amongst other differences, he states that electricity is able to remove inflammatory products, to cause their absorption, whilst suggestion is unable to effect the same. We should be inclined to doubt the possibility of stating so definitely what suggestion cannot do, but at the same time we should be more than prepared to allow that electricity is able to do something, for good or for evil, on its own account. To deny this would be to affirm that an agent with very definite physical powers, to which motor structures and sensory nerves respond very readily, is without effect upon the organism as a whole. Surely electricity is something more than the hospital mistura flava; at least, we must hope so.—” Therap. Monatsh.,” Jan., 1893, p. 32.