Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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the exhauster of muscular irritability by the acts of its own volitions," he could not deduce or arrive at any rule, because such a position was not tenable. Much has been written since that day upon this subject, by other able men who joined issue, as Copeland, Todd, Perera, Duchenne, and many others. The most recent, correct, and concise views we find on this question are deduced from the very excellent work on Nervous Diseases by Dr. Todd, of King's College, London. He concludes, that Faradaic currents do serve as a test in the different cases of hemiplegia, to distinguish between an irritating- and a de- pressing lesion of the brain, but not as a means for distinguish- ing between cerebral and spinal paralysis. He observed, that in certain cases, the paralyzed muscles responded by contrac- tions to the electric excitant very readily, even more so than the sound side, and that in these cases the muscles of the palsied limb always showed more or less degree of rigidity. The degree of this response to the electric stimulus, he concludes to be within certain limits, in proportion to the degree of rigidity; and this latter is in proportion to the extent of the irritating clots, or cysts, that stitl exist within the brain. But in another class of these cases, this stimulus produced very little or no contrac- tion at all; and these were noticed to be those cases usually where the muscles are already more or less wasted. Then in some other of these cases, he found that although the paralysis was almost complete, yet the currents produced equal response in the healthy limbs and palsied limbs of the same patient. These he observed to be cases of true cerebral apoplexy, but occurring in previously healthy individuals who were generally in the prime of life. He holds, therefore, that the state of the muscles has compar- atively little to do in the production of these varied phenomena, but that the peculiar effects of the applied artificial currents of induction or galvanism are rather due to the state of nervous force existing in the paralyzed limbs ; so that, where there is little or no response by contraction, the nervous force in the nerves of that limb is depressed, or is so far exhausted. If in other cases the electric stimulus excites contractions of a still more lively