Elizabeth J. French. A New Path In Electrical Therapeutics (5th Edition). Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1886. pp. 236-243.



TESTIMONY OF MRS. EMMA HARDINGE BRITTEN, THE CELEBRATED LECTURER, ON THE CURE OF A THROAT DISEASE AND THE RECOVERY OF TIER VOICE.


[From the Philadelphia Press of March 7, 1873.]



PHILADELPHIA, March 7, 1873. 

To THE EDITOR OF THE PRESS' :


SIR, Although a foreigner in your country, and only a temporary sojourner in this city, I am sufficiently acquainted with its journalistic literature to appreciate the broad and catholic tone of 'The Press' in relation to all the mooted questions of the day. Believing that the editor of such a journal will accept of such suggestions as tend to the evolution of new ideas, uninfluenced by crafts, cliques, parties, or sects, I earnestly solicit the use of your columns in calling the attention of large-hearted and large-brained members of the medical faculty to a phase of electrical science calculated to unravel a profound problem, and present an invaluable contribution to the realms of therapeutic art. If I understand aright the position of medical men, the chief obstacle to their success in ameliorating the sufferings of the race are, first, the lack of a more exact method in diagnosing disease than a reliance on the superficial signs afforded by symptoms. Next, they fail to arrive at any specific method by which they can deal directly with the causes rather than the effects of physical disturbances. For many years past I have been interested in observing the efforts of the more progressive members of the medical faculty in England, France, Germany, and America to place therapeutic science on the basis of reliable principles, both in the diagnosis and treatment of disease.


I know it is the popular belief that medical practitioners desire to veil their art behind the mask of lingual mystery, besides acting in sundry other ways more calculated to extend the sphere of their practice than the circle of their knowledge; but, on the other hand, I know that there are many noble and progressive minds in the medical ranks who have been long and faithfully seeking to convert probabilities into certainties, and symptomatic indications into infallible diagnoses.


Among these progressionists I have noticed that medical electricity has found much favor, and that many of the most eminent men in the profession recognize it as a valuable adjunct in their practice. I presume there are many who have thus realized the value of electricity in special cases, but who have felt baffled by its uncertainty of action in others.


I know that strenuous efforts have been made to discover such varying currents of electricity as would produce different results on different conditions of disease ; and I also know how much the value of electricity as a remedial agent has been lessened by the unscrupulous practices of the ignorant and the haphazard application of the battery to all manner of diseases by unscientific charlatans. As I have myself ` suffered many things at the hands of the physicians,' and submitted to be experimented upon by French, German, and English electricians, until the greatest marvel of their unscientific practice is that I am now alive to protest against it, so I respectfully submit that I have some right to be heard when I affirm that this beautiful Quaker City contains within its limits the long-sought-for solution to the problem of medical electrical science, and that here, in this great emporium of therapeutic art, resides a comparatively unknown practitioner, who, after twenty-five years of patient study and constant experience in the application of electricity as a remedial agent, has discovered the laws which make its application a mathematical certainty, whether in the diagnosis or treatment of disease. One of the specialties of this lady's discovery is her remarkable power to find all the diseases to which flesh is heir' mapped out on the brain, so that by the application of electricity to the cranium she describes the condition of the organism with unfailing precision. Her methods of treatment also are based upon the adaptation of different currents to different tissues, organs, and diseases, and, as far as 1 have been able to observe, every disease that is curable can by this method be conquered. The fact that this lady can teach her method to her pupils, in the form of a regular system, is a proof that her claims are susceptible of demonstration, and based upon the procedures of fundamental principles.



As the remarkable phase of therapeutics to which I am calling attention involves the possibility of revolutionizing the whole realm of science in that direction, I will ask permission to add an item of personal experience which may serve to illustrate the working of the system, and define the ground upon which I ask credit for my statements.


Some twenty years ago, whilst studying singing at the Royal Academies of Music in London, Paris, and Milan, my throat became seriously affected, and I was, compelled to relinquish my profession as a vocalist. At the Royal Haymarket Theatre, London, where I subsequently became a performer, I still found my voice injured by the complaint with which I suffered. As one of Her Majesty's servants,' I was entitled to attendance from Mr. Liston, Sir Benjamin Brodie, and other medical men eminent in their profession, to whom my case became a subject of interest.


After a succession of painful surgical operations, none of which were effectual in restoring my voice, I was advised, as the only means of checking the progress of rapid pulmonary consumption, to take a long sea voyage. Realizing the hopelessness of my case, and the objection my medical attendants must feel to see a well-known artiste die under their hands, I followed this advice, and made a voyage to America. Shortly after my arrival in New York, I attempted to resume my profession by giving public readings; but the difficulties in my throat, although temporarily modified by my voyage, returned with such force that my physician, Dr. A. D. Wilson, of New York, decided that any continuance of vocal efforts might terminate fatally in a few weeks. It was at this juncture that I was advised to consult an electric physician. Being imbued with strong prejudices against electricians in general, and female doctors in particular, I followed the advice tendered me with great reluctance, and anything but a predisposition in its favor. Before my examination was ended, however, my unreasonable prejudices were entirely removed. The lady I visited not only diagnosed my case with marvelous precision, but promised me a cure.


In one month after the prediction of my early death and burial, my throat was sufficiently restored by electric treatment to enable me to undertake long and arduous representations at the Broadway Theatre, and within three months from the time of my first treatment, I commenced my career as a public lecturer, in which capacity I have continued for the last sixteen years, speaking, on an average, five times a week, and filling your own Academy of Music, and many of the largest halls in the States, without the slightest fatigue or inconvenience.


I would not be guilty of thus egotistically citing my own experiences, did not my public position enable me to refer to great numbers of well-known persons, both in Europe and America, in verification of my statements. My professional career in London and Paris seemed to stereotype the circumstances of my case upon the minds of many eminent medical men, so that, when I returned to London some six years since, and exhibited my recovered powers of voice in public addresses to several thousands of people, expressions of astonishment greeted me from all who remembered me, and had reason to believe those powers had been sacrificed to unsuccessful surgical operations.


In my own person, then, sir, I am an illustration of the beneficial effects of electricity scientifically applied, and when others complain that they have failed to improve,—and some even affirm that they have suffered injury from its use,—could I feel justified if, from any feeling of personal reticence, I withheld from the community the knowledge that the clue was found which would make the application of this force as certain as the working of the Atlantic cable, and its action as reliable as the theorems of mathematics ?


Having devoted much time to the study of medicine myself, I have frequently been urged by my teachers to devote myself wholly to its practice; but, like Hahnemann, I have 'felt despair at the total lack of any reliable system of diagnosing disease,' and so little faith in any modes of treatment which paltered with the effects, rather than the causes of physical disturbances, that, like that great philosopher, I should infallibly 'have deemed it my duty to put on mourning for every patient who might die under my hands.' It was with these views that I, last summer, attended some classes in Boston, where I found the lady to whom I owed the recovery of my voice reading off, with unvarying accuracy, the physical disturbances in her patients' systems by cranial applications of electricity, and through the same force producing cures which were truly marvelous. At first I was disposed to attribute these unusual powers to certain superterrestrial sources with which I am myself very familiar, but on this point the lady soon convinced me of my error. She not only claimed, but absolutely demonstrated, to me the fact, that her methods are based upon purely scientific principles and electrical laws which she has discovered in twenty-five years of deep research and patient experiment. She showed me that different currents can be evolved from carefully-constructed batteries, and adapted, with invariable results, to different characters of disease.


Some of this lady's methods I have myself studied and verified. I have examined the improvements suggested by her in the mechanism of the batteries she uses; proved the variety of the currents she claims, and watched the success of their action upon different organs and tissues. I have learned from her the law by which we can discover all the conditions of the organism, whether in health or disease, mapped out upon the brain, and though it may take a lifetime to arrive at the skill and precision achieved by the discoverer of the system herself, I have seen enough to assure me she has opened up a new path in electrical and anthropological science, the end of which must conduct us into fields of grand and untrodden discovery.


I have already trespassed too long upon your columns, Mr. Editor, whilst dilating on the interesting experiments in which I have been a favored participant ; but I have felt it incumbent on me to make some effort to bring these profound indications of progress in medical science before the community, and I know of no method so effective as to lay them before your numerous readers, and appeal to your generous and candid spirit of journalism to enable me to do so.


I am not now acting under the authority of the lady, Mrs. E. J. French, whose discoveries I record through your columns, nor do I know how far she would care to subject her well-proven facts to the denunciation of speculative philosophy or bigoted professors of rival systems.


I presume she has not forgotten, and would not choose to repeat, the experiences of the magnetizers before the French Academy of Sciences some three-quarters of a century ago; but I know Mrs. French courts investigation, and is earnestly engaged in teaching her methods to such pupils as she deems capable of appreciating its scientific principles. I may venture, therefore, to say that I shall be happy and willing, so long as I remain in the city, to communicate with earnest and candid persons desirous of further information on this subject, and for that purpose I subjoin my address.


Trusting that even in this brief notice of my momentous subject I may succeed in awakening the interest of the truly scientific, especially of such as desire to evolve more light upon the science of medical electricity,

I am, sir, very faithfully yours,


EMMA HARDINGE BRITTEN