Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
537/740

the affected limbs, shoulder muscles, and the upper portion of the spine, by employing very brisk currents through labile (mov- ing) electrodes. This was done daily, and in a fortnight lie was quite restored. Dr. Dewees states, as the result of his experience, that in pa- ralysis resulting from the various affections of organic nerves, or where nutrition, local or general, is deficient, he prefers the pri- mary current of the compound battery, applied in the inverse direction; but in "muscular palsy" the current should lie directed with the nervous ramification.* He recommends, there- fore, the sustained primary current, wherever it is desirable to exercise an organizing power over the affected part, but a resort to induction currents when more stimulation and exercise of the nerves and muscles are desired. Paraplegias of all grades, then, may be arranged in three classes, each category depending upon a lesion of a different kind, and each distinguished by symptoms of its own. We can- not do better than to give the condensed views of Dr. Gull, of Guy's Hospital, on this subject; and they are arranged much as follows: — 1. The first class of paraplegias are those resulting from lesion of the spinal cord. There may proceed, then, from this, a general paralysis of the parts below the injury, whether the lesion be confined to the anterior or posterior portion of the cord, or whether it extends through the entire substance of the spinal cord ; and in cither of these cases there is greater loss of ynotion than of sensation, the sensation, usually, being little, if at all, impaired, whilst the loss of motor power is com- plete ; and this he considers to be almost invariably diagnostic of the spinal origin of the given case of paraplegia. He affirms that, after an attentive search, and having great facilities for this, he cannot find a case of uncomplicated pressure on the cord, or of disorganization of the cord, in which the loss of sensation predominated, or in which there was simply loss of sensation. He says, " My attention has now for years been much given to post mortem appearances ; but I have not met with * New York Journal of Medicine, May, 1847.