Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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elderly people: " " In the case about to be related, the patient had not had a stool for many days, which was his habit. On first seeing him there was no suffering. He seemed a fresh, vig- orous, and active old gentleman. He took his food tolerably well; the pulse was natural; the tongue only a little furred. The abdomen is much distended, especially in botli the iliac re- gions, where there are two large, prominent swellings pro- jecting laterally much beyond the pelvic bones. There are, also, irregular swellings at different parts of the abdomen, especially in the track of the colon. Over some of these points percussion is quite dull; over others it is tympanitic. " It was judged unsafe to give him active purgatives by the mouth at once, in case of the great gut being firmly obstructed with hardened fasces; therefore a turpentine injection was first properly administered to him by a student. The result was ' a prodigious discharge of fecal matter of all degrees of form and consistence.' Much of it was composed of very hard scybala. A dose of active cathartic was now administered after this fore- runner, which brought away also a great mass of feculent mat- ter. Active cathartics had frequently been repeated, but still the belly continued in the same state, presenting especially the singular enlargement and overlapping of the iliac regions. " It was apparent that, owing to long continuous distention of the bowels with faeces and gases, their muscular coats had lost their tone, in some regions at least, and especially in the ccecum and the descending colon. It was then proposed to resort to electricity for relief from this sort of paralytic condi- tion of the bowels; which suggestion was at once carried into effect. It is now more than twenty-five years since galvanism was recommended as a useful remedy in cases of obstinate con- stipation. We can easily see that it may be useful — and, too, upon what principles it acts. The earliest way or method of using it was by guiding the galvanic current in the direction from the mouth to the anus ; and in this way it seems to have been most effectual and prompt, at least in some cases. But its action, to be effective in this manner, is rather disagreeable. But ulterior observations have shown that passing the cur-