Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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Dr. J. C. Christophers gives the following results of the use of electricity in chronic rheumatism.* The first case, he says, was one of three years' duration, and of most intractable char- acter,— the patient having undergone, long courses of active medical treatment, besides sea-bathing, and then homoeopathic treatment. " At first," he says, " I passed a current down the spine for half an hour, or longer; then from the spine to the hand for an hour. At the end of a few weeks, she began to ex- perience a feeling of warmth in the hands, and their strength gradually returned, so that by degrees she resumed her labors in her laundry, continuing the galvanism daily, as before. Her hands have now almost, if not quite, acquired their former power, (the distortion of course remains,) though she is still under treatment for the feeble condition of her ankles and knees, and is galvanized three times a week, with increasing benefit to both. Last winter this patient was confined entirely to her bed ; this winter she has not kept her bed a day ; more- over, she has regularly followed her occupation through a very severe season, and surrounded by circumstances eminently tending to produce an accession of her disease. "Case 2d. — A fine, well-made man, in the prime of life, was attacked, some years since, with severe pain about the ' hip-joint,' extending to the knee, which was at first treated as rheumatic, by drugs, counter-irritants, &c, and by the introduc- tion of needles at short intervals from the hip down to the knee. No benefit was thence derived, and he was obliged to throw up his employment. He consulted several practitioners without obtaining relief, and amongst others myself. He complained of great pain in the buttock and in the knee-joint. The affected limb was two inches shorter than the other, much less in circum- ference, flabby, and cold ; the power of motion was perfect, though sensation was evidently impaired. Here was another intractable case, in which a host of remedies had been tried without success; still there were circumstances about it that induced me to add electro-galvanism to the number, and with * Braithewaite's Retrospect, No. 17, p. 288.