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

current, as appearing from the foregoing, and so far as made apparent by the galvano-tonic contractions, might be ascribed by some to the production of a variable sensation of pain in some cases ; but pain in other cases does not at all appear." Dr. Remak says his own experience has led him to view tins class of results produced by the current, in the muscle fibres and through the nerve fibrils, as proceeding directly through and from the central organs, entirely independent of any pain excited by the current; and that there are also some other clear cases of galvano-tonic contractions, whose origin is exclusively central. To illustrate this he mentions the case of a woman who bad been suffering for eighteen months with a complete hemi- plegia of the right side, together with a total loss of speech, the results of an apoplexia cerebralis which attacked her in childbed. But after mentioning the various treatments she had received, without any good results, he then proceeds to say that when he caused a steady current of from twenty to thirty Daniell's elements to be directed through the nerve cruralis, or its cuta- neous branches, there appeared, after twenty to thirty seconds, involuntary movements of the palsied hand and fingers, that con- tinued as long as he retained the application. Then, again, the same effects were produced from a similar treatment of the nerve ischiaticus ! These effects were evidently not temporary, but enduring, from the fact that the patient re-acquired by de- grees the natural influence of the will over those extensor mus- cles of the leg and arm, which up to that time had been totally paralyzed ; and this bettering was all the more noticeable, as he, from time to time, called forth contractions in the arm from galvano-tonic reflex action " by an up-running current through the nerve ischiaticus — alternated sometimes also with the cur- rent run in the usual manner on the arm itself." He is of the opinion that this kind of battery in-working, through the thigh nerve, is of real and all the more peculiar influence for good, from the distance and direction of the thus produced reflex motions thnragh the rnotory apparatus and powers; as shown, too, by the control the central organs afterwards permanently obtained over the palsied limbs.