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

after a short in-working of forty, then thirty, then twenty ele- ments, for a few seconds each, so that the nerve will now respond promptly to the ten. This increase of excitability, brought about by the current, is most easily traced, for example, on the muscle biceps, or on the facial muscles. "We therefore lay it down as a rule, that a current which at first, as in cases of palsy, produces neither an entrance or leaving contraction, can be made to show it after having an in-working for thirty to sixty seconds of the same current strength, and this all the more prompt the longer the current has so worked. Indeed, very similar results as these last are obtained when, in the same man- ner, we use the induction secondary currents of fine vibrations as if a primary current. From the repeated results at the electric seance of paralyzed patients, we find that the previous employment of say a half- quantity induction current, — that is sufficient to produce mus- cular contractions, although the electrolytic action of this, as shown in the galvanometer, being nearly at zero, — increases the susceptibility of the nerve and muscles for the after in-working of the constant primary current, certainly as far as that is shown by pain, redness, and twitchings at the entrance and leaving of the current. Furthermore, we find that the susceptibility of the muscles and nerves to the action of induction or Faradaic cur- rents, and to constant or Galvanic currents, is about the same; but there are cases among healthy persons, and others still more marked among the paralytic, where the action of this current or that, decidedly prevails. It is but a natural query, arising from many observations of Galvanic and Faradaic treatments, whether the change thus pro- duced in the electro-tonus of the nerve and its depending mus- cles does not play an essential part in those cases where are shown the most wonderful and otherwise unaccountable curative effects of the various electric currents ; although it is more in harmony with our present knowledge, and the prevailing opinions, to say that the electrolytic working of the current produces the res- toration. "Volta's Alternatives." — "We look upon these manoeuvres, in given cases, as some of the most powerful means we possess for