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

with whole muscles or nerve groups, if we place one electrode, for instance, on any point of the upper or forearm we choose, as on the nerve medianus, while the other electrode is made to move over the nerve radialis, or its motory branches in their muscles. The flexors will at first remain at rest, while only the extensors will get into a state of labile movement; i. e., after a time, when they have acquired a sufficient toning-up from the current stimulus, (which, however, sometimes fails to occur,) but which can be easily ascertained by a reverson of the trial. Even in cases of nerve and muscle sickness, and where the exten- sors are deprived of all voluntary capability, neither are able to be excited more by localized Faradaic currents directed to those muscles, still will their labile excitement, under the same con- ditions, bring about a contraction in the antagonizing flexor muscles, and this simply because the flexors were in that case already more susceptible to the influence than were the exten- sors. But even where the excitability of two groups of nerves or muscles, as, for instance, those of the flexors and extensors of the well-rested and healthy forearm, — as far as it can be ascer- tained by the application of a similarly directed and equally strong current, that shows at the entrance, and leaving no re- markable difference of result, — even then will every directed current by a uni-polar moving electrode, which embraces those two nerve groups or muscle groups, leave at rest the parts that are in contact with or near to the stationary electrode; but at the same time there will be produced within the reach of the moving, staggering electrode, visible labile contractions. M. Remak finds from his practice, as well as from his pre-trials, that the primary current of galvanism possesses, through a vary- ing density, a kind of working that reaches the blood vessels that radiate through the muscles, causing them to enlarge and con- tract alternately, so as to produce a visible swelling of the mus- cle fibres themselves, and increasing their endosmotic capability; in which respect, he says, the primary constant current differs from the induced secondary current of Faradaism, for this lat- ter, he thinks, decreases this endosmotic capability, whenever it is long or often " actively " applied. For, he says, as soon as