A Treatise On Clinical Medicine

electricity, cold, heat, and change. Electricity.?Of the non-medicinal remedies some of the recent applications of electricity may be mentioned, or the high-frequency currents according to the d'Arsonval method. The application of such a remedy, however, necessitates the use of an electric mechanism which produces a high-frequency current, either from a static machine or from an induction coil. Its most marked effect is to reduce a pulse of high tension, the existence of which should have been proved by a sphygmomanometer. The register for health of blood- pressure varies with age?for a young person it may not be above 140 to 160 mm., the latter figure being normal for a person forty-five years of age. After that it rises with each year, reaching 200 in many cases at seventy years, but the condition is often morbid, and caused by arteriosclerosis and by chronic kidney disease, when it rises to 200 to 220 or even 250 mm. Anyone with such a blood- pressure as this is in danger of the formation of aneurysms or of apoplexy. The d'Arsonval current, however, is a very efficacious means for reducing the blood-pressure even below what would be the normal for the patient's age. It does so for a few hours only, but if the applications be kept up twice a day or every day it often causes a more or less permanent reduction in arterial tension. One other property of electricity may be here mentioned, which is the local dilatation of any superficial arteries by a battery ...