Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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their points, and their shafts covered well with hard japan for insulation, will do well. The insertion of the needles was at- tended with no pain worth mentioning, and the primary current, from ten elements of Daniell's battery, was brought in contact with the heads of these needles continuously for five minutes, and so on three times at the seance, and thus repeated every three days for the first nine clays. After that, the current was applied daily from large soft sponge electrodes, as employed for neural- gia, to the loins and limb through wet spots on the roller. Thus the case was treated until the twenty-one days expired, when the patient was set free once more from the splint and lied re- straint, and to our mutual gratification, the thigh bone was found fairly knit together, and the leg was stiff. The subsequent treatment at the knee joint and about the limb was the same as would be instituted for an old rheumatism. In a fortnight more, the limb felt to him more secure and comfortable, and what was quite as pleasing and surprising, the pseudo-anchy- .losed knee also began to show a loosening and joint-like action. This became more and more apparent, so that in three months the captain was prepared to think of the sea again, as he now walked well, and accordingly arranged for an East India voyage. Electric Cautery. Galvanic cauterization by the " electro-caustic" (heat) has received some attention at the hands of surgeons both here and abroad. This operation is based upon the calorific properties of galvanic electricity of quantity, as when from some five or six of Bunsen's or from a dozen elements of Grove's battery. For the purpose of avoiding the " firing-iron," and in cases of nwvus to avoid hemorrhage, and for a moxa, Dr. Fabre Pala- prat was the first to employ the red-white heat of a platinum wire, made so by a voltaic or galvanic battery. In 1845, Professor Steinheil, of Munich, advised a method for cauter- izing the pulp of the dental nerve in decayed and painful teeth, which in that year was accomplished by M. Heider. Dr. Cru- sell, of St. Petersburg, operated, in 1846, with a fine platinum