Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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agreeable general sensations, such as occur on ordinary febrile attacks. A restless, feverish, and uncomfortable night follows, after which the patient experiences a very threatening and tire- some pain in the course of the great sciatic nerve. The limb is now all but powerless, with growing pains either down the back of the thigh, (which is becoming, also, extremely tender to the touch,) or on the outside of the knee, or the calf of the leg, or near the external ankle bone, or, perhaps, involving the whole limb. If, now, the limb is moved, the pain increases, darting up into the loins, and down the limb. The patient wishes to lie on his back, with the limb extended, and complains now of the prickling sensation called " pins and needles." The attack may be more or less gradual, and the febrile phenomenon more or loss great; but in any case where this affection has attained a degree of severity that characterizes the acute, the symptoms are so characteristic that no practitioner of ordinary intelligence can fail at once to recognize its true nature. But the great majority of cases that call on medical men for treatment are the sub- acute. The history and symptoms of these are the same as the acute, only less in degree and extent, and the invasion is more tame. The suffering and the lameness even hero are great, and the patient fmds no easy position. In case the early stages of the acute or the sub-acute attack are not submitted to active and controlling treatment, the case is very likely to merge into the chronic form, and, as such, it may continue to harass the sufferer for any length of time. But it may be asked, Where is the line to be drawn to distinguish the acute and sub-acute from the chronic sciatica ? The chronic disease of a nerve, says Dr. Rood, of England, differs not essen- tially from a similar morbid condition of other structures. The term " chronic," when applied to disease, does not indicate merely or exclusively the idea of duration, or long continuance, as the origin of the word — chronos, time — would seem to im- ply, but, rather, designates a special form of morbid action. Then, observe, the symptoms of pain, tenderness, weakness, &c, will be present both in the sub-acute and in the chronic. In the former they will be intensified by exercise ; in the latter, at