Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
99/740

current to a paralyzed member ? The steady and long uninter- rupted working of the current produces a stupefying effect on the nerves so treated, i. e., to a certain degree, so as to rob the nerve of a part of its excitability. But the working of a rapid!// interrupted current, on the contrary, has a tendency to produce the opposite result; that is, to retain the excitability of the nerve in such activity as to produce even an artificial tetanus. In paralysis we conclude the nervous system has lost its excitability. In tetanus it has acquired a too great excitability. The treat- ment for the cure must therefore be diametrically opposite ; for tetanus, the continuous voltaic current, by a steady and pro- tracted working, stupefies the nerve ; while for paralysis the in- terrupted current is needed to excite the susceptibility from moment to moment. Dr. Remak replies in answer to these propositions, that if the cause of ordinary tetanus really existed, like the artificial as produced by induction cm-rents, for instance, i. c., in a similar change of the nerve fibrils, even then the ex- pectation of a successful application of the steady current can receive our faith only as the current is at the same time able to remove the cause of the tetanus, which certainly would be a rather bold hope, in cases of traumatic tetanus. Almost as bold would it be, says Remak, to assert that the same means which produce tetanic convulsions (as the interrupted induction cur- rent of magneto-electricity) are also capable of subjecting par- alyzed muscles to the power of the will, and even to impart to them that capability for action which is necessary for their nor- mal function. Could it not be said, with as much reason, asks Remak, that such artificial tetanic convulsions will agitate or disturb the molecules of the muscle, so as to render it unfit ever again to obey the will ? Four years later, and M. Marianiiai declares that he finds that the alternations of Tolta in the main are true ; namely, that the longer working of the steady current direction makes the mus- cles insensible to the closing or opening of the circuit, if con- tinued in the same direction; but that this sensibility is quite reestablished as soon as the opposite current direction has worked about the same length of time, provided these currents