paroxysm, is, in my opinion, imprudent. To prevent one fit of the gout, goes farther towards a cure, than to relieve many.

The gout being generally the production of the over-action of exciting powers, it requires a high degree of exciting powers to reach and effectually to affect the lower degree of excitability: but to raise this degree of excitement by a great proportion of an individual stimulus, appears to me not so agreeable as to use a combination of stimulants, especially those that consist in the various modes of applying electricity. But I do not mean to exclude the assistance of other stimulating powers; but that in extraordinary cases, or violent attacks of the gout, the most powerful of all other stimulants, viz. opium, should be conjoined.

Dysentery.

I doubt not my reader will think me romantic in introducing this disease, to be treated by electricity. I am ready to confess, that in all probability, I should never have suggested the idea of electrifying for this disease, but for the importunity of one man. A certain Mr. Huntington, at Ballston pool, who had been exercised with a vehement dysentery, or bloody flux, for about six days, and in great pain, urged me to give him a few shocks, merely to ease him of pain, (for he had observed the shocks to be almost an universal anodyne.) I, at first thought, refused; but as he was importunate, I finally gave him about twenty very light shocks, through the seat of the pain his his bowels, to his back; they directly purged him, and eased his pain: but after a few hours, the pain increased upon him: I electrified him as before; it purged, but with less blood than before. - This was repeated three or four times, and he was restored thereby, in thirty hours, or nearly that time: I gave him only one dose of weak laudanum beside. This experiment was useful to me, and many others, the next summer, when that disease prevailed, and was epidemic and very mortal in the towns of Galway, Greenfield, Milton, and part of Ballston. I then resided in Galway, where I had an opportunity of a thorough investigation of the fact; and in about one hundred cases, sufficiently demonstrated, that the gentle shock, taken through the intestines, was an infallible remedy against this disease; which, at that time, resisted almost any other mean; insomuch that nearly two thirds, of infants in particular, fell victims to its fury. I was informed, that not a single child, at the breast, survived the disease, excepting two that were brought to my machine. It was an unlucky circumstance, at that time, that I had no machine but one that was very large; the consequence was, the patients took cold in returning home, which procrastinated their cure.

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