Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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motion also declined, but in a far less degree. In most of these numerous cases, recovery took place, although the palsy was very capricious — sometimes self-vanishing, and then again re- appearing. In some cases, however, the disease went on to a fatal termination. This wide-spread disease had all the characteris- tics of a malady induced by the presence of some poisonous agent in the blood. Prevailing- numbness is then the character- istic of this class. 3. The third class of paraplegic diseases, already partially defined under the second class, are to be recognized also both by their diminished vitality, and peculiarly diminished nerve force. These arc the cases that result mainly from anxiety, deep men- tal depression, irregular practices, <tc., which are attended with general diminution of the encephalic and other nervous forces. In these there is a greater proportional impairment of sensation than in spinal affections. Whatever impairment of the power of voluntary motion there may be, is often in a greater degree oiving to the want of the guiding- influence of sensation, (mus- cular sensation ?) than to any direct loss of motor power. Therefore the gait of such persons will be found to be very much like that of a drunken man. Where the anaesthesia in these cases is complete, the person is obliged to employ the visual sense to enable him to walk at all without stumbling, as a substitute for the " muscular sense." Thus, says Dr. Gull, " one patient told me he could not walk without looking down at his feet all the time, because he felt as if his legs were cut off below the knees. Another patient said he had to do so because he had no apparent weight." The author has seen a multitude of these cases in the last few years, who came from almost every part of the Union for elec- tro-therapeutic treatment. Such, indeed, probably form the very largest class of all nervous affections that present for this remedy; and this to my mind is not strange, since being con- vinced of the almost every-where prevalence of venereal ex- cess, (for self, or to gratify another!) or intense mental anxie- ties, and disappointments, that so perpetually harass and ex- haust the human nervous system. But I was about to say,