Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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wire rendered incandescent by yoltaic electricity, — drawing the wire back and forth, like a saw, across the base of the tumor. He says he found that, when adroitly managed, there was pro- duced neither pain nor hemorrhage. In England this has been repeated, and of late with admirable success. M. Nelatin, ever since the year 1850, has been making use of it for destroying and curing erectile sub-cutaneous tumors, and at the same time preserving the skin. Dr. M. J. Rcgnauld, of Paris, by extensive practical and candid research in this province, is inclined to limit the utility of these electric cauteries; i. e., he admits their great excellence under certain special conditions. He says the first obstacle is the want of a great battery power; the second is, that the smallness of the platinum wire allows it to cool in the moist tissues, if held still; but where it can be sawed back and forth, it will not cool down as if heated by a fire, because the heating is all the while going on, and the instant the wire draws out ;it one side of the wound it is sufficiently hot, and can be as quickly drawn back again with effect. But, after all, the wire does not retain its heat amply for general surgical use, and this is a great obstacle. He not only admits, but admires, the advantages of this method for special cases, as near delicate soft parts or organs, and where of little extent, or is hem- orrhagic, and in deep, narrow parts. For the best success, he advises patience, and repetition of the application at different stages, and when the wound has dried from time to time. In hospital practice there is an incontestable advantage as an auxiliary to surgery that certainly would justify the maintain- ing a set of some five or six Bunsen's jars of coke, or a dozen of Grove's, or a Cruikshanks' trough of fifty pairs, which indeed could be well employed often for other equally important opera- tions. In 1855, Dr. Middeldorpff published a very valuable work on the subject of Galvano-Causties. The instruments he used for these new and peculiar operations in surgery he termed " galvano-port-ligatures," galvanic cauteries, galvanic setons, &c. ; drawings of which, accompanied with a paper from Dr.