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

some should be covered with large and very fine sponges ; others with very small; while others should be covered with thick wash- leather ; each must be thoroughly wet or moist (as well as scru- pulously clean) when used. The moisture employed may be water or salt water. In my own practice I use pure water exclu- sively for the last moistening of the electrode sponge or leather. I employ in anaesthetic and paralytic cases three sizes of me- tallic oval-shaped electrodes: the first is half an inch in diame- ter ; the next is one inch ; the next is two inches. For the interossei and other narrow places, I have others wedge-shaped, so that they can be easily crowded down between the phalanges; and these are very useful, also, where the nerve trunk lies deep, and we wish to bury the current-giver deep into the thick flesh. Such electrodes are preferable for cases of paralysis, and wher- ever there is nerve ,or muscle anaesthesia. But for almost all kinds of hyperassthetic cases of nerve, joint, or muscle affection, then the broad, soft and moist sponge electrodes are rather to be chosen.• Success in this practice greatly depends upon these nice points. Mr. Thomas Hall, the electrical instrument maker of this city, has made for me, and other physicians and surgeons, a great variety of very handy and useful electrode instruments of this sort. (See Chapter III.) Thus I have endeavored to give here the general principles and some of the minutice to be ob- served in managing the electric sitting of a patient; but other very important rules will be found in Chapters III., IV., VI., VII., VIII., and X. Other Methods for using the Induction Currents. Dr. Duchenne, of Bologne, is unquestionably entitled to the honor of having first of all introduced into medical practice the excitement of single muscles, or muscle groups by electric cur- rents. The precepts, however, which are contained in his large work on the method of application of " localized electricity" appear far from being sufficient, either in number or explicit- ness. Dr. Duchenne, we observe, distinguishes two classes of operations ; first, the mediate electrization of the muscles, through 28*