Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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other patients where this medication is more indicated than for such when correctly practised. Intestinal atony is manifested as a constipation, arising from a want of peristaltic power of the contractile and muscular fibres of tho intestines, or from a loss of tone or power of contrac- tion in the muscles of the abdominal walls themselves. When both these states exist in the same case, tympanitic distention of the abdomen is very likely to be the most troublesome symp- tom. When neglected, it may become extreme, and threaten life by asphyxia from upward pressure. For all these states of atony I apply the sponge electrodes with Faradaic currents, first to the spine and then to the regions of the abdomen, never allowing the electrodes to rest more than fifteen to twenty sec- onds at any one place. The labile motion is my most favorite method here ; using all the strength of current the patient can tolerably bear, and thus, as it were, bathing the boivels ivith elec- tricity without removing the electrodes. I could here report any number of cases to illustrate this; but as the treatment is so similar, and yet influenced and varied in each case according to the general and special principles laid down in this work, that I forbear, simply adding, for example, that the positive elec- trode is usually placed upon the cervical or dorsal spine, while the negative is planted for a quarter or a half minute at a time over some portion of the colon, and then removed from place to place by being slid along without being taken off. At other times tho positive pole is placed over tho lumbar region or under the coccyx, while the negative pole is over the external abdomi- nal ring. The current should run from the spine to the bowels, or be changed in direction from minute to minute ; moreover, the electrode that is over the bowels, whether the positive or the negative, should be thus often alternately pressed very hard, so as to displace flatus from under it, and then again held more lightly, and then again moved along to a new position. Dr. Robert Christison has employed galvanism in various atonic states of the abdominal viscera, and gives the following case * as an illustration of his views of " extreme constipation in * Monthly Journal of Medical Science, Sept., 1858, p. 252.