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

where it is, and seek with the other over the anterior border of the muscle, in front of the shoulder, for that point where the nerve spinal accessory of Willis passes under the edge of the trapezius, we at once obtain a very powerful and painful bend- ing of the head backwards, or laterally, or else a lifting of the shoulder, according as we have left the first electrode near the back of the head, or near the shoulder. If we make the trial on the sterno-cleido-mastoideus, by placing the electrodes on the respective ends of that muscle, and using, as in the former trials, the Faradaic currents of mod- erate strength, we obtain no nodding of the head; but if tvc increase the current we get a contraction, and perhaps this is accompanied with some pain in the region of the ramification of the main auricular branch of the cervical plexus. But if we place one of the electrodes on about the middle of the muscle, and then seek with the other along the outer border of the muscle, that point where the nerve accessorius of the eighth pair passes under the back edge of that muscle, we immediately obtain strong and painful nodding of the head, accompanied perhaps with a by-working on the muscles of the tongue and throat that depend upon the nerve hypoglossi, if we touch or include that nerve ganglion. This, however, can and should be avoided. There are persons with peculiarly torpid facial muscles, on whom the placing of these electrodes with this current in the course of the muscle fibres, produces almost or quite no effect whatever ; but contractions are quickly produced by placing one of the electrodes on the middle of the given muscle, while the other hunts the exact spot where the branch of the nerve facia- lis (portio dura) enters it. This is readily tried on any one, and safely too, by testing the muscle depressor anguli oris, or the muscle frontalis, or the attollens auriculae. In many muscles we often find, as, for instance, in the orbicu- laris palpebrarum, the placing of both electrodes to the same muscle is not always altogether advisable, on account of the in- working of the then necessarily strong current on the eyeball. The isolated, painless, and harmless together-drawing and purs- ing of this muscle is better obtained by placing one electrode