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

with one of the surfaces of the torpedo fish, while an iron wire communicated with the other surface of the fish to retard the current. Place lias thus heen given to this chapter on comparative elec- tro-physiology, as observed in the fishes, not as a mere matter of curiosity, but as the more simple and powerful demonstration of fundamental facts relating to this department of science; and for the same reason we shall admit the testimony of other phenomena, as observed in the batrachian tribe, and in the dog, rabbit, and other animals, before we come to examine pre-trials in the living human organism. " Animal Electricity" as observed in Man, but more plainly illustrated in Animals. Actual trials show that the artificial section that is obtained by cutting a living muscle transversely with a very sharp instru- ment gives exactly the same result, as to animal electric cur- rents, as the transverse test of the muscle while intact. In fact, almost no current is obtained upon placing lengthwise, between the poles of the galvanometer or the galvanoscope, sim- ply the middle portion of red muscular flesh, cut clean and trans- versely from all its tendonous attachments at the two ends, and stripped of its investing fascia. The same negative results are obtained likewise if the clean platinum tips of the galvanometer touch only the tendonous extremities of an entire muscle. But, on the other hand, a very decided effect is obtained by placing in contact on the one side an artificial transverse sec- tion, and on the other the longitudinal section of the muscle,— the course of the current being found always directed in the muscle from the transverse to the longitudinal section. De la Reve, therefore, sums up the laiv of the muscle current by stat- ing that each point of the natural or artificial lengthwise section of a muscle is positive, in respect to the points of the trans- verse section, whether natural or artificial, and that the points that are the nearest to the centre, in all respects, are negative with respect to all those which are more distant.