Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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whole right arm appears to be nearly paralyzed, even to the shoulder, although he can hold a cane in his hand. If the arm and hand are rested on the table so as to extend the first phalanges, and thus allow the second and third phalanges to extend over the edge of the table, he has all needful power to move, extend, and contract the second and third phalanges; and this is evidence that the interossei and lumbricales have not been involved. In the left, this is in less degree. The volun- tary lifting of the arm from the table, he finds, is difficult; but the extending it out horizontally is quite impossible. The back of the forearm is fairly concaved from the wasting of the ex- tensors. The flexors of the arm are not in the least affected, but the deltoid is diminished certainly one half. Upon his taking the operating chair and receiving the electrodes of one- inch metal balls covered with wet wash-leather, the one being placed over the nerve ulnaris and the other over the wasted muscles, no kind of contraction could be produced by the strongest electro-magnetic currents. But he continued to re- ceive electric treatments twice a day for tAvelve days, when it was noticed that not only the withered deltoid muscle showed some excitability, but also the wasted extensors of the forearm began to swell with fluids, became warmer, and showed some signs of muscle fibre contractions. The treatments from this time were had daily for ten days more, accompanied with sham- pooing and automatic movements while at home ; and these latter were also repeated several times a day. The patient received from this time also at every seance the primary current of galvanic electricity, from twenty to thirty Daniell's elements, as part of the treatment; using the Faradaic currents first, and then the Galvanic, — in all not more than from five to ten minutes at each seance. Not only the labile method, but also metallic reversings and polar alternations were employed, so as to produce muscular contractions if possible, and to cause greater capillary circulations. At the end of these ten days it was very noticeable that the warmth, growth, and strength of the palsied and wasted muscles of both arms had returned faster than in the twenty days previous ; and, to my mind, the 46