Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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with pain, while the opening of the circuit is attended with a contraction of the muscles of the limbs. Thus there are found two fundamental states or periods of vitality in the nerves and nervous system of man, entirely independent of those states brought about by the prolonged or abusive use of different treatments, which, from the mere tem- porary action of the artificial galvanic current, gives two classes of results. In the first condition the current acts readily in both directions; that is, at the closure of the circuit, during the con- tinuance, and at its opening. In the second condition, it acts mainly at its commencing, if running with the nerves, but at its ceasing, if running contrary to the nerves. Again: if we find that a stabile and somewhat strong galvanic current is able to produce pain, together with contractions in the muscles of the back and head, and this even when the cur- rent does not act directly upon a nerve that ramifies into these muscles, thus, indeed, bringing about a motion at will, purely by the power and skill of the electric excitation of the nerve or nerves, situated above the excited part, then we conclude that this result must be due to that action which Marshall Hall has designated as reflex, or reflexion, — an action which is due, in the first instance, to the sensorial excitation of the nerve upon which the current directly acts, and this bringing about the con- traction through the intervention of the nerve centres ; as, for in- stance, from the periphery sensory nerves thus telegraphing back the answer through the motor nerves. And here lies the broad- est and deepest channel for the introduction of those yet to be discovered electro-therapeutical operations. "What we already know of them is not only invaluable in itself, so far as it goes, but is also rich in promise, though as yet, we believe, it has received no adequate attention. Marianini, Matteucci, Marshall Hall, Dubois-Reymond, Becquerel, and Brown-Sequard have in vivisections severed the spines and otherwise mutilated the bodies of a thousand animals, and thus fairly established this mysterious, but as yet scarcely comprehended fact. Let practi- cal men and lovers of science observe and study this law of electro-reflex action. 17*