Los Angeles herald., 1910-03-13
SUCCESSFUL WOMAN PHYSICIAN

Marion Newton Clark, or DIR. NJ. n.
Clark, as she has been called for many
years, was found at her writing table,
4O6 Hamburger office building, sur
rounded by a huge pile of books, both
ancient and modern. short shrift,
thought the writer, and then plunged
in with, "I've been told that you we're
one of the pioneers in medical cleo
tricity"
A smile was followed by: "Oh, no:
the medical virtues of electricity as ii
was radiated from the gold, silver and
amber worn by the inhabitants of the
royal city of Sardis that they're going
to unearth now, you know, was fully
appreciated as a plague preventative.
The bubonic plague, l mean, thousands
of years ago.
electro therapeutics, like everything
else that comes to stay, had to climb
the long, winding stairway of induetive
reasoning. building up the seemingly
endless columns of fact upon fact, I'M
til the great masters of science deem
its claims sufficiently verified to be
laid for all time upon the royal altar
of truth, and such position was ac-
corded medical electricity over one
hundred and fifty years ago. The
torchlight procession seeking for
electro therapeutical phenomena grows
larger and broader 9s the years adj
vance, but the lantern bearers, the
seekers for facts-they gather in atoms
and stow away in their brains, may
be appreciated after they are pursuing
their studies on a higher plane OF
existence.
But why did not this knowledge ad-
vance so that the general curative
powers of electricity were appreciated
in 1900? 1t did. You could not print
even the long list of names of the
great medical men that became en-
Unused with the experimental work.
They became too enthusiastic. Many
taught and thought they could raise
the dead to life, cataleptic and other
fifty persons and those afflicted with
comatose hysteria gave them chance
to seemingly make good their claims
to the general public.
"Clergymen invested in the old
static machines, treating the poor of
their fiocks, who received great bene-
fit without cost.
when 1 was a child ] found the
Journal of John Wesley, the father of
Methodism, on my fathers study
table. | read of the wonderful things
he did and was having done in the
three different places he had built for
the suffering poor. Electricity was
given instead of medicine My father
explained the reason why so many
intelligent clergymen continued the
use of electricity from Wesley's time
to the then present, and why John
Wesley was so bitterly prosecuted by
different professional men. AS I grew
in electrical study and experiment we
were blessed with the present of real
faradic machine, and my father made
me understand the necessity of having
electrodes distinctively positive and
negative
"The idea of preferring zinc and cop
per to all other metals came from
Volta's writings, but metal could not
be used bare on the flesh without
shocking and burning. A young woman
has just died in New York on account
of a friend pressing an electric but
ton upon her to relieve her pain. as
he had relieved himself His resistance
saved him. I have an old note book
filled with such medical accidents. How
to make electricity safe is the problem
that |. solved in 1898 by perforating
fine metal positive and negative of any
shape or size for external use. I was