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

has neglected to do it, that when the electrodes are thus situ- ated over a nerve trunk or bundle of muscle fibres, it is best to disturb them a little, certainly as often as every ten or fifteen seconds, in order to produce variations of density in the con- stant current, as advised by Dubois-Reymond; and if the one that is over the muscle is did along, not all the time, but say from three to six times during each minute, so as to cross and embrace the different bundles of muscle fibres, the benefit is found to be all the greater. On the next day he says that pa- tient was brought again to receive further treatment. " The seance was repeated as before, but be could bear now only twenty-five elements at most; but there was directed, in addition to the above, for each side, a current of sixteen elements run- ning/row the nerve thoracici ill the fossa subclavieularis to the muscle peetoralis major, or that portion of it that lies over the third and fourth ribs. The patient is now evidently better; pain and trembling less ;—to come the next day. Thus for a fort- night he was treated, first, two or three days in the one limb, and then the same in the other limb, and that with a general improvement, except in the enlarged joints of the fingers and toes. The patient has been able to be about for the past six months, and, instead of relapsing, is still decidedly improving every way to a high degree of health, with the only exception of the enlarged joints." Dr. Remak introduces the following case to show again the remedial effects of the primary current of galvanism, which is, perhaps, more familiarly known to some as the " constant cur- rent." The case was one of cramps, with a rigid persistent con- traction of the middle finger of the left hand, which had from time to time gradually extended up the flexors of the arm to the shoulder, originating, according to the history of the patient, doubtless, from a central source. He therefore directed at first a current from fifteen Daniell's batteries, in his usual manner, through the shoulder muscles, when he observed at once that the up-running current produced in that arm a twitch at the opening of the circuit. This, he says, he always regards as a sign of abnormal hyper-excitability, not produced by the cur-