Notes on the treatment of chronic skin diseases : with a report of 1,000 cases treated at the Skin Hospital, Hyde Road, Manchester / by H. Stanley Gale.

  • Gale, H. Stanley (Henry Stanley)
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes on the treatment of chronic skin diseases : with a report of 1,000 cases treated at the Skin Hospital, Hyde Road, Manchester / by H. Stanley Gale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    diseased spot, the other to some part of the body which is healthy. Sometimes a wire brush is substituted for one of the sponges; and sometimes, hut rarely, a metal button. It must be remembered that a current which causes pain does more harm than good. As a last resource, and often a successful one, I galvanise the spine and the sympathetic nerves. I follow in this the advice given by Remak, who asserted that such a process modified in some unknown way the general nutritive processes of the body. This is done as follows: the spine, by placing one sponge at the top and the other at the bottom; the cervical sympathetic, by applying the negative pole to the superior ganglion in the stylomastoid fossa, below and behind the angle of the inferior maxilla, while the positive may be placed above the manubrium or on the seventh cervical vertebra. The application should not exceed one minute. That many obscure symptoms vanish under this treatment is well known to those who have paid any attention to this remedy, and I can state from personal experience that many of the most obstinate skin affections, and more particularly the remnants of such affections, disappear under its use. As a remedy in many cases of anaesthesia and hyperaesthesia of the skin, I presume no one would dispute the advantages which electricity has over all others. It must be remembered that I am not advocating the use of galvanism necessarily by itself. The ordinary remedies may often be used at the same time3 and used with advantage. Some