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

sponges, which are in part stuffed into the ends of hollow metallic cylinders, or handles, which are insulated on wood. But for lim- iting the electric force to and in a muscle of a smaller size, such as the lumbricales, interossei, or muscles of the face, he employs " small conical electrodes," which he more frequently terms " ex- citers" but which are simply poles, or electrodes. These should always be covered with wet leather, as buckskin, or with moist sponge. Very recently, Dr.. Duchenne has observed that if the electrodes are applied to certain spots on the skin, the contrac- tions of the muscles are much more surely and easily produced than if the cxcitors are applied to other points on the skin; and these places he has termed " points of election" But it was left for Dr. Reniak, of Berlin,*" to point out, and for Dr. Ziemssen to demonstrate, clinically and anatomically, those defined spots, which are found to correspond with the points of entrance of the motor nerves into the lateral borders or edges of the muscles.] The latter marked upon the skin of the patient, with nitrate of silver, such lines and spots as proved electro-muscular responsive,— to the there placed electrode, — and then, after death, by dissecting the motor nerve branches to their entrance into the bundles of muscle fibres, he thus found that these two series of experiments agreed with each other perfectly, in every respect. Hence Remak and Ziemssen are both of the opinion that there is no muscular contraction by exactly direct localized electrization of the muscles, as Dr. Duchenne claims, but contend, on the contrary, that in every case the contraction is brought about by the interposition or cooperation of the muscle nerve. Dr. Duchenne remarks that to practise muscular Faradaization, both direct and indirect, requires exact anatomical knowledge of the position of the nerves. In the arm, for instance, the electric stimulus can be limited to the median nerve, on the in- ner and inferior third of the humerus. It can be limited to the ulnar nerve, on the space between the olecranon and the internal condyle. The radial nerve is accessible to the electrode at the * Uber methodische Elektrisirung gelahmter Muskelen, Berlin, 1856. + Die Electricitat in der Medicine, Berlin, 1857.