Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
446/740

tive electrode, which was a soft sponge, over the most painful spot, and this was just back of the trochanter major ; while the negative electrode, also a moist sponge, was firmly placed some four or five inches off, and then at every ten seconds moved along in a radius about the first electrode, so that the current of medium strength, whether Galvanic or Faradaic, should flow in all directions from that centre of pain, but not removing the electrode until the pain was fairly subdued, which, however, was brought about in some six minutes. The seance was then finished with the steady current run down the limb for a minute or two from hip to ankle. When twinges of pain occurred dur- ing the seance, I at once took off the tipper electrode, some two or three times, very suddenly, so as to produce twitchings of the muscles, and this scattered the new-growing pains. This treatment was repeated every other day for ten days, when all pains had vanished completely. Further treatment, but more seldom, restored the limb also from weakness and lameness, so as to be very nearly, if not quite, equal to the other. Reading the practice of M. Ducros, from the Gazette Me- dicate, we find he says, " In the most intense hemicrania, and in the most obstinate tic douloureux, whether fronto-facial or temporo-facial, the pain disappears instantly upon the applica- tion of extra strong aqua ammonia to the palatine arch, by means of a camel's hair brush; the brush being allowed to remain on the part till a copious flow of tears has been excited. If the pain returns, a fresh application will again produce a cessation of the neuralgia." I determined, for the same end, to direct a small buckskin-covered ball electrode to the same part, while the other electrode was planted upon the nape of the neck, in a most violent case I had, and to my surprise and the patient's relief and gratification, the excessive pain would cease upon a few seconds' administration of strong direct electro- magnetism, or a direct current shock, or two, from some twenty cups of galvanism. The pain did not return so soon, nor so powerfully, as at first, but it did return in some degree after each such temporary victory. But by repeating the application a few times, all pain and soreness were eradicated.