Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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ing. But he now, for the first time, gave utterance to hoarse sounds. After a delay of six days the battery of 50 pairs was again employed, and 300 shocks more were given. The same treatment was repeated every two or three days, and then, at similar intervals, 400 shocks were given with the 70 pair batte- ry. The voice, meanwhile, and the motive power of the tongue and larynx, gradually returned to their normal condition ; and after the twelfth such seance, the patient was completely re- stored. The deduction drawn from this, by the surgeon who has reported the case, is, that no nervous affection whatever should ever be regarded as incurable, until electricity, in some form or method, has been fairly tried and found to fail." I have quoted the foregoing case, not as an example of treat- ment, by any means, but to show an heroic procedure, that should rather be avoided than imitated. Supposing the galvanic batte- ry to have been the most mild, i. c., constant, — as, for example, the improved Danicll's battery, and only twenty-five cups were used,—if directed by a small electrode to the trunk of the affected nerves, with some dozen interruptions for three minutes at each seance, I believe the same good result would have followed, with- out the least hazard. And probably it would be better still to employ electro-magnetism first, by means of small electrodes di- rected stabile, to the trunk and branches of the nerve affected, and then finishing the seance by employing larger sponge elec- trodes labile, both over the throat, cervical plexus and region, as well as over the throat and down the sternum. Professor Sedillot, of Strasburg, lately brought a case of com- plete dumbness and aphonia (" deaf and dumb") of twelve years' standing, which he rapidly cured by means of electricity, before the Academy of Sciences of Paris.* The details run thus: " The patient, a woman 30 years of age, had been visited 12 years be- fore admission, (Nov. 19, 1855,) with complete dumbness and aphonia, in consequence of a fright. Various modes of treat- ment had been tried without success. The patient understood every thing said around her, and answered by gestures, but could utter neither word nor sound. The tongue was retracted * Braithewaite's Retrospect, No. 34, p. 30.