Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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rent, but a manifestation of an already existing susceptibility. He continued this treatment a little, when the arm movements were found to be loosened in every direction. Similar manoeu- vres were then repeated, as also a current run down from the muscle pectora/is, first to its insertion in the humerus, and then moving by gliding the positive electrode farther and farther down the arm by gentle hitches, — done every few seconds, — following the course of the muscle nerves; whereupon most remarkable bettering effects were found to have been produced. In the course of every two or three days the seance was thus re- peated, always directing the variations of the current, he says, much through the broad-spread fibres of the pectoral muscles, which, in a word, was followed with very decided and lasting good results. He states that he introduces this case merely to show by the results thus obtained, the confirmation in practice of the capability of this current of galvanism to increase, (even in palsy, rigid contractions, and atrophy, whose central source could not be doubted^) and entirely restore again the normal action of those blighted muscles and limbs. When treating of the physiological action of the primary cur- rent, Dr. Romak says, " I found from the multitude of my elec- tric treatments, and especially from my experience with such patients as had been previously treated by some other surgeons with the induction currents of magneto-electricity or electro- magnetism '■'■powerfully localized" on the muscles, according to Dr. Duchenne's method, and particularly m those cases of pa- ralysis that arose from a central cause, that although there were readily produced a plenty of tetanic or clonic convulsive move- ments in the affected muscles, by means of the induced (secon- dary) current, still they did not appear to restore the voluntary motive power; but, on the contrary, they sometimes evidently lessened this where it already had existed in some little degree, and that this capability for voluntary action appeared to be thus actually diminished by the strong induction currents, exactly in proportion as the given case of paralysis was depending at the time on a central source." (?) Subsequently, he treated alter- nate patients, in great numbers, by these two different kinds of