Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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such paralysis from cases in which spasm, excited immediately from some disease affecting the spinal marrow, (or system,) is superadded — cases which I have recently distinguished by the term spas mo-paralysis. " It is especially necessary to distinguish between such cases as, from involving " some disease affecting the spinal marrow itself," are attended by early spasmodic affection, and those cases of pure cerebral paralysis, in which spasm supervenes at a remote period, from the physiological action of the spinal marrow on muscles from which the influence of volition being withdrawn, the irritability of their fibre is augmented and their permanent contraction induced, presenting the only case, probably, in which such contraction is physiological, or pathological, only ill a sec- ondary point of view. " It is true that Dr. Todd has referred the early and the tardy contractions in hemiplegia, or cerebral paralysis, to the opera- tion of other causes, but it is equally certain that Dr. Todd's views are erroneous ; for both experiment and observation prove that no condition of the cerebrum, when limited in its influenco to the cerebrum, can induce spasmodic action. " An equal, or rather a double error is committed by Dr. Todd in reference to the action of strychnine. It has been amply proved that strychnine acts on the spinal marrow, and only on the spinal marrow. Throughout this inquiry it is essential, not only that our instruments should be identical, but that our terms should bear a meaning at once specific and accurate. The questions submitted to fresh experiment are, — " 1. Are there cases of paralysis in which the irritability of the muscular fibre is greater in the paralytic than in the unaf- fected part of the limb ? " 2. Are there cases of paralysis in which the reverse of this obtains ? " 3. What are these cases severally and respectively ? Are the former cases in which the influence of the cerebrum alone is severed ? and are the latter cases in which the influence of the spinal marrow also is intercepted ? " 4. Is the galvanic battery, or trough of Cruikshank, cau-