Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
626/740

long applied, say for hours together, it will increase the atony, rather than relieve it. In extreme inertia, it will fail because there is nothing to arouse. It is here contra-indicated. In- deed, it is a rule to be scrupulously observed, the more feeble or exhausted is the patient, or the more protracted the inertia has been, the more careful we must be not to prolong the application very far — certainly not a moment beyond the attained contrac- tion or suspension of hemorrhage. But in some atonic and hemorrhagic states, not attended with plethora or inflammation, and not otherwise contra-indicated, we can rely upon electricity, when skilfully employed, to be of most signal service in saving life-blood, and even life itself. (See Appendix E, P, G.) Dr. Swan, and also Dr. Robert Remak of Berlin, in 1809, ex- pressed the then prevailing opinion that the human heart and uterus possessed very few and very small nerves. But Dr. Rob- ert Lee has demonstrated in the 41st and 42d volumes of the Philosophical Transactions, that there are nerves, which he illus- trated by three engravings, showing, on these organs, numerous great ganglia and plexuses of nerves. He says " these enlarge with the coats, blood vessels, and absorbents during pregnancy, and which return after parturition to their original condition, as before conception. Recent dissections which I have made of the ganglia and nerves of the virgin and of the gravid uterus have enabled me not merely to confirm the accuracy of these descrip- tions and delineations, but to discover the still more important anatomical and physiological truth, that there are ganglia situated in the muscular substance of the uterus and plexuses of nerves, which accompany all the arteries, veins, and absorbents, distrib- uted throughout its walls. It is demonstrated by these dissec- tions that there are not only great ganglia at the neck and on the body of the uterus, but ganglia between the strata of the mus- cular fibres, and that the whole muscular and vascular struc- tures of the uterus are pervaded with ganglia and nerves. If the dissections which have been made of the ganglia and nerves of the virgin uterus be compared with those of the gravid uterus, it will be seen that the nervous structures of the uterus enlarge during pregnancy upwards of seventy times."