Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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traversed a smaller number of degrees ; this arises from the fact that the energy of muscular contraction is not, under all circumstances, the same in both arms. Occupied, as I have been, for more than half a century, with physiological researches of this kind, the discovery of M. Reymond has most deeply interested me. It is a vital phenomenon, rendered sensible to us by an instrument of physics. In connection with the same subject I may mention the result of some curious experiments recently made by M. Ducros. The conductors of a galvanometer were applied, one to the forehead and the other to the neck. The needle of it remained steady, and marked forty degrees. The patient's thigh was now strongly pinched, and under the influence of the pain, the needle passed to eighty degrees, with great rapidity. This experiment, fre- quently repeated, gave the same results; and M. Ducros hence concludes, " that all causes which increase vital activity, react on the galvanic needle, even at a distance from the point of their immediate action." Laws and General Principles deduced from the Physiological Effects of Electricity. Long before the experiments of Dr. Galvani, it was known, as we have shown, that electricity exercised a special action over organized bodies, as friction electricity, produced by the cylinder machine, had long been employed for medical purposes. But the modus operandi of that action was less known then than now. If we but carefully follow the delicate researches of M. Marianini, the Italian philosopher, we shall behold a very minia- ture creation, — the halo and glory of colors, the source of the beautiful flowers. If we observe the enormous labors of Bec- querel, Matteucci, Arago, Gay-Lussac, and De la Rive, on fer- mentation, germination, and cell-growth, or on circulation, heat, and other chemico-physiological and electro-physiological phenomena, that mutually occupy the jurisdiction of organic chemistry and electricity, we then find tangible evidence and definite results, of the greatest magnitude and value.