Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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Just here I will add, that from my note book I gather some prac- tical points. He took six sittings, each week of fifteen minutes each. Faradaic currents, suddenly alternated, but of moderate strength, were exclusively employed the first two weeks. One electrode used here was the half-inch disk, while the other was a two-inch sponge. The former was always planted upon some large nerve trunk, while the other traced the edges and surface of the depending affected muscles, but one minute at a time, then a rest of a part of a minute, and then suddenly changed in direction for another minute, and so on. One seance would be given to the arm, shoulder, and hand ; the next, to the loins, leg, and foot. In the beginning of each seance there was particular gentleness and care, until the patient became accus- tomed to it, when the current was gradually increased to a three fourths strength of a good helix machine that was run by two Smee's batteries. After the first fortnight, the last half of each sitting was devoted to the employment of the primary galvanic current, or rather the induction currents were first used for two or three minutes, and then some half dozen minutes were occu- pied with the galvanic current, interrupted or reversed every ten seconds, either on the nerve trunks or over the spine, using from twenty to thirty Daniell's elements. The seance is then finished out by using stronger induction currents for extensive surface action, by labile movements, and through this means to awaken and produce a general but gentle reflex action. At the end of the first ten days, his friends claimed for him a general improve- ment. In the course of ten days more, as I find it recorded in my note book, he claims a sensible improvement for himself, as not only more strength, but as to increased warmth and plump- ness of the sick limbs, with which his friends seemed both astonished and delighted. Aften ten days more, his seance was arranged so as to occur three times in each week, for the month to come, at the end of which the muscles were evidently much improved by the treatments, — responding more promptly to the electric stimulus, both by sensation and contraction, and there was much more voluntary control and power. The skin was not so dry and cadaverous, while the muscles were larger, more solid,