Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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electric currents; and the total results completely confirmed him in favor of the use of the primary current of galvanism, if used by a given rule, especially for those cases of paralysis, contrac- tions, and fixed joints, that depend upon an existing central lesion ! This, the greatest proposition of Dr. Remak, the author of this work cannot fully indorse; it savors too much of rash and unqualified statement, or of hazardous treatment; still, there is doubtless involved here a great physiological principle, that, we hold, should be watched and studied more and more, as one of the very fundamental laws of both disease and cure; viz., " reflex action." In order to render the electro-nmscular contractions produced at the seance, in the paralytic, of lasting and curative service, he says it is necessary to change the gross, uncertain, and partial muscle-fibre contractions into actual twitchings, or strong to- gether-drawings of all the fibres of a sick muscle, either through the aid of a sentient nerve which is simultaneously touched by the current; or, if this cannot be done, try the manoeuvring of the current after Volta's or Ritter's method, or such other polar alternations as will change the point of entrance of the current, so as to be first at this and then at that pole, whether the direc- tion of the current is also changed or not. He believes that the closure of a moderate, primary current of electricity through the nerves, in any case of " paralysis from a central cause," pro- duces a favorable result, only and provided that, at each closing and opening of the circuit, during the seance, we are careful to make that electrode that is over the more external or distant nerve ramification, to vary in pressure, or position every now and then, (i. e., every quarter or half minute,) so as to wave or vary the density of the current, both before and at each putting on and taking off the electrode from the skin. M. Hildenhains has used the so-called constant primary cur- rent of galvanism for therapeutical purposes, and has reported some trials made under the auspices of M. Rayer. But here was used a very different apparatus, and this, too, in a very dif- ferent method from Dr. Remak's practice. The former em- ployed Pulvermacher's chain, which, we know, is composed of