Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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bread, of wheat or rye, cold, and at least one day old, with good butter, moderate tea, and meat, with potatoes or beans once a day. She must not sleep upon a feather bed, nor yet in a heated room; is to wear flannel, and over the affected joint and limb flannels of double thickness; to apply close over the painful joint at bed time a piece of oiled silk or rubber cloth, upon the under side of which is spread a drachm or two of opium that has been rubbed up very soft in a few drops of rum and hot water; to shock the spine by suddenly applying at every bed time a large towel squeezed out in very cold water, which is quickly passed a few times up and down the whole spine and back, and then is to be as quickly wiped dry and got into bed for the night. Miss S. was positively encouraged that she should be ben- efited, and the electric treatments were commenced, with the regimen as above. As the pelvis had been tilted over for about twenty years, assimilating and exaggerating the position as- sumed in true hip disease, there was double curvature of the spine from the unequal action of the muscles of the back; besides, the left glutei could be felt in strong irritative, wavy contractions, and the nates, instead of being on that side as on the sound side, was very protuberant; therefore the first busi- ness was to balance up the action of the muscles of the back and loins. The first week was devoted to this, using the pri- mary current of galvanism. Next, the circle treatment was instituted over the great sciatic nerve, just as employed in sci- atica or neuralgia, observing the same rules and precautions. In three months, this lady went to church regularly, and took her daily promenade in the Mall. The atrophy and coldness below the knee was replaced with more habitual warmth, flesh color, and plumpness; the contraction of the hamstrings so much overcome that a yardstick laid upon the knee pan would touch the upper end of the rectus femoris, while the lower end of the stick would rest upon the front of the ankle above the instep. Instead of the toes now pointing to the ground, she wore a steel spring high shoe, with her little foot nearly level, and she often walks without a cane, or even a perceptible limp-