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

Although Dr. Duchenne appears to have been the first to notice the border points, or what he called " spots," on some one or two muscles, which were the sterno-cleido-mastoideus and the trapezius, yet he evidently did not comprehend the law, nor even the cause and bearing of the phenomenon. This obser- vation, too, corresponds very much with the " painful points " dis- covered in neuralgic cases by his countryman, Dr. Vaileix,soine dozen years before, indeed exactly so in many instances ; yet it appears to have remained without influencing Dr. Duchenne's general or special " methodical localization." Not only from his work do we judge, but those who have seen him operate say he places the two electrodes (which are large) upon the surface of the muscles without any apparent rule.or order, and thus usually succeeds in producing visible contrac- tions, it is true, but only because he makes use of tremendously strong inducing battery currents. We are to understand that he always operates with the Faradaic currents; but to drive his large helix machine he employs eight jars of DanielVs original batteries ! No such induction battery arrangement is ever used in this country, that I know of, for medical purposes. It appears that Dr. Remak, the distinguished medical electri- cian of Berlin, and Dr. Duchenne, the great French medical electrician, recently met in Paris and made trials of their differ- ent methods of operating on the same subjects, for the same diseases, and with the same induction apparatus ; which was the Duchenne Machine just alluded to. The patient had been suffering with lead-palsy. Dr. Duchenne made the first applica- tions, and as soon as the flexors of the fingers were thus put in motion, the patient expressed insupportable pain, as he said, and as his countenance and actions also indicated. He was then requested to bring the muscle biceps into contraction, which he did by placing the electrodes — which, by the way, were large, wet sponges, stuffed into the hollow ends of common me- tallic handles — on the surface of that muscle and in the direc- tion of its muscle fibres, when he obtained a visible contraction and plumping up of the muscle ; but there was no bending of the forearm by it, while the features of the patient, in the mean 25*