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

line between the acting electrodes; and this seems to take place all the more through the adjacent and more moist tissues, the longer the current is kept in action at one spot. Where we are working a current over a nerve trunk, or the muscle, the only- way almost that I have found to determine whether the stream is capable of gaining the proposed end, is to test whether the interruption of the current excites any contraction through the motory nerves. In many cases we find the evidence of good in- working through the sensitive nerves, by an eccentric sensation, which is a sign, whether all the radiating fibrils of the nerve are excited in an equal manner. There are a very great number of by-workings of the primary current that are not so important. There is, however, an effect of this kind whenever an active current is applied about the head or neck, which causes flashes of light, dizziness, silver taste, or sound, besides a tendency to tilt the head over towards the removed electrode, for it is not during the steady working of the current that these results obtain, so much as at the putting on or taking off the electrodes. These effects are to be avoided, i. e., not to be often repeated with strength at once, as a mere experiment, but nevertheless are to be observed in practice as valuable evidence of sufficiency of current for the given case, and that the action of the current is certainly going on. By-working of either primary or secondary currents on the heart is rarely produced ; indeed, I can say that I have never as yet seen any kind of such effects, either in healthy or sick per- sons, from any of my ordinary rational applications, such as are required in treatments. But I would never risk the trial very powerfully, either for experiment or for treatment. There are not unfrequently kinds of after-workings of this current in well persons, and in sick persons also, which should be mentioned. In one case, perhaps, several hours after the seance, there will be sensations in the joints very similar to those produced at the time, by the in-working of the current; in another patient, there will be the silver taste often repeated; in another, there will be sensations like those from the vibrations of induced or secondary currents; in others, a prickling in a