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

their nerve trunks; second, an immediate electrization, i. e., applying the electrodes directly to the single muscle, or bundle of muscles. The electrodes are in every case to be placed as near to each other as possible, while each of the two classes of electrizations requires otherwise different management. The technical terms he employs on page 47, to designate his par- ticular method arc, direct muscular Faradaization, and indirect muscular Faradaization,— which consist in causing every mus- cle or bundle of muscles to contract singly, by placing the moist electrodes, or excitors, as he terms them, on those points of the skin " which correspond with the surface of the muscle to be Faradaizcd." Nothing, he says, is easier than this way of Faradaizing, especially on the surface regions of the body and limbs, when the operator is acquainted with certain anatomical facts; but that it is more difficult with respect to the deeper layers of muscles, although almost all of them can be reached at certain places by direct excitement. The excitors should always be placed on the fleshy part of the muscles, but jiever on the sinews or tendons of the muscles. To Faradaizc a muscle completely, it is necessary to embrace the whole surface of it by the excitors. The current must be strong in proportion to the thickness of the muscle. " As the wet excitors touch only the outer surface of the muscle," says Dr. Duchenne, " and as the nerve cords reach the muscles of the upper surface regions only by traversing through the lower surface, we feel confident that the contractions of muscles are not produced through the help of nerve cords." But the direct Faradaization of the facial mus- cles is very difficult, on account of the there numerous nerves; but after all he thinks it possible to avoid the latter, by simply moving the excitors gradually along in the direction of the mus- cle fibres. These precepts and methods of Dr. Duchenne show plainly that he rests on the supposition that it is possible to make the muscles contract without the intervention of their nerve fibres; but perhaps not exclusively so: at least he does not follow or confine himself to his own prescribed rules ; but at the end of the chapter just alluded to, he says we must not think it enough