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

tics the march of discovery is continually going on. Entirely new paths are opened ; new methods of research, and of doing things, new instruments to facilitate the work, new laws are evolved, giving connection and combination of facts and phe- nomena which are unceasingly and increasingly accumulating around us. The discoveries of M. Matteucci, and of Dubois- Reymond have demonstrated to the equal astonishment and ad- miration of the present age, the curious, exquisite, and subtile relations which exist between voltaic electricity and the natural functions of nerves and muscles, not by any means proving the absolute identity of the nervous element of force with electricity, as some claim, but approximating a view that solves facts be- yond all previous expectation. But who is able, after all, to discuss the actual relations of vital to physical forces, as applied especially to the human organism ? Greater still would be the folly to plunge here into the depths of that still more abstruse question of the proximate relation of matter to mind, or into the domain of physical causes — to the total phenomena of ani- mal life ! None of this can occupy our time or space. First, I wish to quote an account which has been given of the first shock of electricity, which electricity was accumulated, and then administered to the human body, by any explorer in this particular field of science. The simple story shows the utter astonishment that followed the effects. The historian says, " The end of the year 1745 and the beginning of the year 1746 were rendered famous by the discovery of the accumulation of electricity on glass, called the Leyden vial, so called because the experiment was made by a native of Leyden, Mr. Cuncres. But the person who made the discovery of the phenomenon was a Mr. Von Kleest, the dean of Cammin. On the 4th of Novem- ber, 1745, the first electric shock was felt by this gentleman." He says, when a nail, or a piece of thick brass wire, is put into an apothecary's glass vial, and this is electrified, then very remarkable effects do follow. Mr. Muschenbroek tried the ex- periment with a very thin glass bowl, and says in a letter to M. Reaumur, that he felt himself struck in his arms, shoulder, and breast, so that he lost his breath; and it was two days before he