Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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cannot reproduce it. I find that labile contractions of the muscle fibres are really required to exterminate this condition for pain, as also to loosen the stiffness of the joints below where the tendons of the muscles are inserted. Such persons must be advised to avoid a damp air, either as a place of busi- ness, or lodging or residence, and to wear their flannels in Slimmer, and thick flannel in winter, until a painless habit and endurance of the nervous system of that person become established. Gout. In atonic gout, or that condition which we find after the fever and inflammation of an attack have subsided, not only in regular inflammatory gout, but also in those masked cases of wandering or radiating gouty pains, electricity, when correctly applied, is of untold value, for it not only relieves, but it breaks up, the pain- causing condition, whatever that may be ; so is this true of it in gouty, as well as rheumatic, nodosities, and in the wandering or flying pains of rheumatic gout. Moreover, we often find, during the stages of arthritis nodosa, that the epiphysis of phosphates or bony deposit and pseudo nodosities recede, after a time, par- ticularly if about the shoulder joint, leaving an extremely sick and weak state of the neighboring muscles of the shoulder and arm, which, if not promptly treated, soon become soft and lean, the flexors taking on a condition of tonic contraction and hard- ness, while the extensors yield to the perpetual traction, and assume a state of partial wasting paralysis. Now, by a skilful use of electricity, this evil may be averted, and even a more or less restoration may be obtained where it already exists, (p. 476.) The treatment of such cases may be successfully conducted by means of either primary or secondary currents; but here I have found that the alternate use, first of electro-magnetism, and then galvanism, at each seance, or, rather, the first few days the former, and then the latter for a few times, to give the best results. The induced current must be employed with the least possible catalytical power, i. e., with the zinc lifted as much out of the battery solution as possible to allow the machine to work ;