ELECTRIFIED PATIENTS.

Taihape Daily Times, 13 March 1918, Page 3

ELECTRIFIED PATIENTS.

NEW SURGICAL METHODS. "The best-equipped electrical workshop in Europe for repairing injured soldiers" was the description an R.A. M.C. colonel recently applied to the Radcliffe Infirmary at Oxford. After a visit to the infirmary I fully agree with him, says the medical correspondent of the "Daily Mail." An electrrical apparatus which totally numbs the severest nerve pains while at the same time gradually bringing about a permanent cure, a machine which will cure acute "water on the knee" in one twenty-minute exposure, and another which charges the patient up like a storage battery are only a few of the wonders I'saw. A young soldier suffering from ceaseless pain in one hand, caused by an obscure injury to a nerve, was treated by an ordinary-looking electric battery from which two wires led, one being held in the injured hand and the other attached to a mental plate at the back of the neck. The current stops the pain in the hand, the periods of freedom increasing after each | treatment. For the removal of wasting growths a patient is connected with a special type of battery. When he is "fully charged" the operator brings a needle pointed metal instrument almost into touch with the tissue to be removed. A flame of electricity jumps from the patient to the intrument, and the growth is instantaneously destroyed. Through the free passage afforded to heat rays the germ in the growth is literally "cooked" by the electric dis- , oharge being concentrated on sof small an area, thus producing a highcurrent density. The effect can be seen during a n operation as a grey coagulation or destruction of the tissue* The problem of how to exercise electricity on paralysed muscles without unduly stimulating the healthy ones has been .solved by means of a j newly perfected system of condensers , which cause the injured muscles to slowly contract and relax, while the healthy one remain quiescent.