ROCKWELL, Alphonso David, physician, born in New Canaan, Connecticut, 18 May, 1840. He was educated at Kenyon college and graduated in medicine at Bellevue medical college, New York city, in 1864. Entering the army as assistant surgeon of the 6th Ohio cavalry, he was soon promoted surgeon of brigade with the rank of major, and served through the campaigns of 1864 and 1865 in Virginia. In 1866 he associated himself with Dr. George M. Beard for the study of the uses of electricity in the cure of nervous diseases. He was electro-therapeutist to the New York state women's hospital from 1874 till 1884, and has since been professor of electro-therapeutics in the New York post-graduate medical school and hospital. With Dr. Beard, he was the originator of important methods of using electricity, especially general faradization as a tonic agent, and the pioneer in establishing electro-therapeutics on a scientific basis in the United States, where electricity had been neglected by the profession and had fallen into the hands of charlatans. He described the constitutional effects of general electrization in the "New York Medical Record" in 1866, and subsequently wrote, with Dr. Beard, five articles on "Medical Uses of Electricity" which attracted much attention and were translated into various European languages. In 1868 he published an article on "General Electrization in certain Uterine Disorders," and in 1869 he issued a monograph on "Electricity as a Means of Diagnosis." He also published an article on the "Comparative Value of the Galvanic and Faradie Currents" in 1870; in 1871 one on "Electrolysis and its Application to the Treatment of Disease." There appeared also an exhaustive treatise, by him conjointly with Dr. Beard, on the " Medical and Surgical Uses of Electricity" (New York, 1872; revised ed., 1875; new ed., with much additional matter, 1878; 6th revised ed., New York, 1888). Among his other monographs and papers are " Clinical Researches in Electro-Surgery" (1873); "Application of Electricity to the Central Nervous System" (1873) ; "Electrolytic Treatment of Cancer" (1874); "Physiological and Therapeutical Relations of Electricity to the Nervous System" (1875) ; "Aphasia" (1876) ; " Intermittent Hemiplegia" (1877)" a volume of "Lectures on the Relation of Electricity to Medicine and Surgery" {1878); " Use of Electricity in the Treatment of Epilepsy" (1880) ; "Differential Indications for the Use of the Dynamic and Franklinic Forms of Electricity " (1882); and "Successful Treatment of Extra-Uterine Pregnancy" (1883).