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

current of the same pile, when, on the opening of the circuit, and much more on the reversion of the current, it showed manifest contractions. He at another time left the two thighs of a de- capitated frog for five hours exposed to the continuous current of seven voltaic pairs, so that one foot was in connection with the positive pole, while the other was in contact with the negative pole. There appeared at the end of that time no sort of con- tractions, either at the closure or opening of the current. But when the same was now again exposed, for five hours and fifty minutes, to the action of a reversed current direction of sixty pairs, it actually regained its excitability in such a degree as to respond not only to the same current strength, but even re- sponding to seven pairs, and a little to three pairs of plates. Thus, according to M. Marianini, the stupefying or weakening effects from the long and continuous action of a moderate current, first declared by Volta, do not appear in fact at all; or at most, not tintil after many hours, and then always very indistinctly. It is to be noticed here, that M. Matteucci did not follow out these researches of M. Marianini, on the steady working of the current, but directed his attention mainly to the department of animal electricity, thus extending Nobili's discoveries. In con- nection with Dr. Farina in 1838, he made trial in Turin with the continuous and steady working current of galvanism, using thirty to forty pairs, in a case of traumatic tetanus, which oc- curred in a man mortally wounded. An up-running current was first employed through the spine from the sacrum to the nuche, and to avoid entrance convulsions, they managed, after applying one pole and retaining it in situ, to get the other on very gradually by means of a wet strip of cloth connected with the second electrode. This gave as positive and favorable re- sults as the nature of the case could admit of. M. Matteucci then says, that he has found that when frogs have been tetanized by strychnine, or by opium, the tonic con- vulsions can be dissolved down, so that death sets in after due time without any further convulsions by using even and continu- ous currents. In his treatise " on the electro-physiological phe- nomena in animals," he urges the importance of the electric