Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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the needles, for one minute ; that is, there were inserted three pairs of needles, and I made contact with two at a time, and thus occupied at each sitting some five or six minutes in all. In ten days this was repeated five times, when she walked down stairs and about the dining room, as she had not done since the winter before. She soon recovered, and is still well, and may be seen every fair day in her carriage about our streets where ladies do trading. Case 3. — A truckman, of middle age, applied, with a chronic neuralgic rheumatism lurking about the parts of the right shoul- der, but mostly in the deltoid muscle, at its lower end where it is inserted in the humerus. The shoulder muscles and joint were so lame and painful, that he could not raise his arm, and the pains at times were most excruciating. It appeared to me a case to be most speedily benefited by electro-puncture, and I therefore inserted one needle in front and below the head of the humerus, and the other at the insertion of the deltoid, and with an inverse current of bearable strength, which was five Darnell's batteries; it was allowed to continue for some five minutes, with as many interruptions at every thirty seconds. He was greatly "sup- pled " by this one seance, and two more eradicated the whole " tangle," as he termed it, so that he swung his arm in all direc- tions ; only it was not as strong, however, as before the rheu- matic attack, which was some months previous. It can be seen, I think, that some chronic rheumatisms and chronic neuralgias may thus be cut short more surely than by any other means. No doubt simple acu-punctvre would prove serviceable in these same selected cases; but it is my opinion, from experience with both, that every seance with electro-punc- ture strikes a more effectual blow for disturbing, or for modify- ing by direct catalysis, and hence changing the polarity of the morbid nerves, and therefore for eradicating the disease, than many acu-punctures, or blisters, or other less disturbing forces can possibly do. In one extremely bad case of sciatica, I adopted the following plan: The patient was placed on the operating mattress, lying on his sound side, with the limb semi-flexed ; placed the posi-