Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
232/740

Heat is constantly generated by the ceaseless vitalized electro- chemical actions taking place in the peripheral battery of the animal organism. In fact, it appears demonstrated that the body is warmed by the changes that are ever taking place all over it; and the changed matter that is the product of this, is simply eliminated by the lungs, kidneys, and other organs. Sir Edward Holmes showed, long since, that if the nerves of a stag's antlers arc cut across, the heat in the antlers is increased. When the spinal marrow is divided, we find the heat of the parts, from which the nervous supply is cut off, almost invariably rises, at least for a given time, to several degrees above the tempera- ture of the inner part of the mouth. The peripheral battery, in health, is evidently kept in due subjection by the central battery; and if the two are by any means severed in any part of the body, the action beyond that spot appears to run wild and uncon- trolled, until it runs down to fatty degeneration, atrophy, or to palsy, and then to death. All this is familiar to physicians who see the various cases of early traumatic paralysis. But after the abnormal heat, the muscles rapidly waste away, and then there is deficient heat. Also, as part of the phenomena, we observe large quantities of animal matter in the urine, showing that no small change of matter is taking place. Indeed, this abnormal rapid work and extensive change of matter appears to be pre- cisely similar to that observed in an ordinary galvanic battery, where there happens to be no resisting medium to the pairs in each cell, but the action is, as Faraday would say, " immediate,'" local, self-devouring. Besides, may not this phenomenon, when circumscribed in effect, constitute what we call local inflamma- tion ? and, when general, constitute fever ? Compound gal- vanic batteries can be variously modified in their " immediate action " by unbalancing their materials. Osmotic Force. — What is termed " osmotic force " is quite different from ordinary endosmose. Napier succeeded, simply by aid of the current of a single pair of zinc and copper, which were plunged respectively into two compartments of a vessel, separated only by a porous diaphragm, each filled with distilled water, in thus making a volume of water of about two pounds' 19