On 25 November 1862 the following announcement was placed in the Limerick Reporter newspaper:
Electricity.
21, Upper Cecil-Street.
Mr. Anthony Quin, Medical Galvanist and Vital Electrician, has just returned to Limerick. He will apply this universal and powerful agent for the relief and cure of nervous diseases.
Mr Quin can give reference of the highest character as to his successful treatment of Epileptic cases. – Several of his former patients, now residing in Limerick, had suffered from this fearful malady for nine years; they have been perfectly cured; others have been cured within the last two years.
N.B – Mr Quin has constantly applied Galvanison with the sanction and under the direction of the leading professional medical gentlemen of Limerick and elsewhere. The most approved medical galvanic and magnetic electric machines made to order or repaired.
Galvanism is the use of electric current attached to living or nonliving tissue. It gets its name from Luigi Galvani (1737-1798). Galvani observed that the legs of dead frogs would twitch when in contact with metals or alloys that were magnetic and electrically connected with an electrolyte. This lead to the belief by the medical knowledge of the time that if the individual was connected to an electric current usually to their legs or throat (allegedly the vocal chord). An electric charge was sent through the individual. Which would cause them to twitch violently “revitalising” their nerves. This form of pseudo-science was common in the Victorian Era and was the inspiration for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
This building was located next to 22 Cecil Street Upper undoubtedly some of those mentioned in the 100 year history of that building would have encountered Mr Quin.
