Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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others neuralgia ; and are often attended cither with con- tractions or spasms of some muscles, which may prove tem- porary or permanent. Beware of a caries of the upper cervi- cal vertebrae. Take counsel of the history of the case. Neuralgia of the occipital nerve, which may also be attended with stiffness of the muscles of the neck, is often a very painful and tedious affair. A very distressing case, of long standing, of this kind, sent me by Dr. R. H. Storcr, has been greatly benefited lay electro-puncture. I inserted two needles very deep on each side of the upper cervical vertebra}, so as to embrace in the current the long, posterior ganglia, or at least the roots of those seven or eight small branches of nerves that leave these ganglia near the posterior arch of the atlas, and which, it is well known, are distributed to the muscles of the upper and back part of the neck and head. (See D, Note 2.) Neuralgia of the thoracic or intercostal nerves is often presented in both sexes, either amounting to true neuralgic acuteness, or hardly more than a rheumatic aching, (muscular hyperesthesia,) or perhaps attended with passing spasms. They may arise from vascular congestion of a portion of the spinal cord, or of its membranes, or from actual inflammation or other morbid state in those parts ; but this latter is not so positively agreed upon. Besides, there are very many painful cases that affect the thoracic and abdominal nerves, and their depending integument and muscles, without any corresponding evidence of irritation, congestion, or inflammation of the cord; while, on the other hand, evidence by post mortem actually shows these disorders of the spine, in other cases, which had been entirely unsuspected, by not being manifested by more painful expressions. Thoracic neuralgia shows itself about the seventh, eighth, and ninth ribs, at the spot where they unite with their cartilages, and that mainly on the left side. This indeed constitutes the familiar " infra mammary pain," which the author has found is by no means peculiar to females, and hence is not neces- sarily hysterical, even when it occurs in women ; although it is equally true that very many of those cases do seem to be so