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

over the entrance spot where the nerve enters this muscle, which is at its outer border, while the other electrode may be somewhere near, so as to embrace the muscle fibres, and that with a very gentle current, for the great excitability of these eye muscle nerves, renders it quite sufficient for one electrode, or the route between the two electrodes, to merely graze some of the nerve twigs, or muscle fibres to produce its complete physiologi- cal action. If we return to the muscle pectoralis major, and place one electrode on almost any part of the muscle, while with the other we seek the spot at its upper border and just under the clavicle, where the nerve pectoralis anterior comes from under that bone, we shall produce prompt and powerful together-drawings of the whole muscle. And this can be done if the first electrode is placed on the muscle, or even beyond it. Quite analogous results can be obtained on the muscle serratus anticus, or on the fleshy muscles of the forearm, or of the leg. Here we can- not but notice some difference between the excitability of the muscles that partake in the acts of respiration over those of the extremities, as the former are so much the easier to affect; but in every case we shall observe the bearing and importance of the increased effects produced by the same means, used by different methods; i. e., by not so strictly and invariaby follow- ing the " localized method" according to Dr. Duchenne, but calling to our aid also, on every proper occasion, the appeal to the muscles rather through the nerve branches or nerve trunk. This, in my judgment, after no small clinical practice, has, I must say, a decided preference, both for immediate visible or sen- sible effects, but much more for the profound and lasting impres- sion which in effect, we know is the cure. Herewith I wish to urge the importance, then, of not being always satisfied with simply bringing a portion of the superficial muscle fibres, or the smaller terminal nerve fibrils, under the influence of the elec- tric current; but we are to endeavor to reach also the nerve branching, and even the large nerve trunk of the part, that this subtle current may traverse them for a given time in a certain guided direction ; but more particularly must we seek that point