Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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cer stationed at Charlestown nary yard, fell on his left hand in October, 1858, which broke the ulna, and luxated the radius at the wrist joint. The surgeon attempted to set it, but the boy was wild of restraint, and left for friends at a distance ; therefore it was put in some kind of starch permanent splint, where it remained for five weeks. When it was opened a large collection of pus was discharged, all the fingers and hand muscles were closely flexed, and the wrist joint became firm in anchylose; total loss of sensation in fingers. This state of things had con- tinued for three months before he came to me, during which time he had employed liniments and bap-hazard electric applica- tions, from time to time, by the advice of many. "When this patient first took the chair for methodic electric treatment, I found all his fingers, hand, and forearm contracted, stiff, and cold, as if hard wood ; anchylosis of hand joints ; com- plete paralysis with atrophy of all the muscles of the forearm and hand, as much so, as in the last stages of progressive atrophy ; great pain still about the wrist; neither the primary nor the secondary current could produce the least twitch of the muscles. I therefore applied first a current from thirty Darnell's elements, down-running from the upper and inner side of the arm to the palm of the hand, for five or six minutes, intermitting for a few seconds at every minute. Then I used fifty elements through the wrist for one minute, the positive electrode being placed a little above the wrist on its flexion, while the negative was planted on the back of the hand just below the wrist, so as to direct the current through the whole joint, downward and outward. Next, I used the same number of elements on the extensors of the hand and forearm for a minute, and then finish- ing the seance with polar alternatives, for one minute more, on all the extensor muscles of the fingers, hand, and arm. This, he said, had cleared away the pain, and gave to it the sensation of life, lightness, and freedom, although it was still utterly help- less. Much in this manner he was treated daily for a week, when some little motion was obtained — to be continued in like manner another week — from that, astonishing improvement. The powers of motion make their appearance successively; first