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

situated outside, front of the throat, on a level with the cryeo- thyroid muscle. Thus situated, they may receive the current gently at first, and at the same time the sponge is moved about a little. But he says the indirect method is easier, and often effectual. One excitor is in that case placed over the inferior constrictor muscle on the anterior portion of the throat, and so reaches the inferior laryngeal nerve. The Faradaization of the bladder is advised for paralysis of that organ. Dr. Duchenne employs a kind of sound of gutta pcrcha, which insulates two movable wires in its two channels, which is much like a double catheter. This is first carried into the bladder, and then the wires are pressed forward through the double canula, and having a spring or band for that pur- pose, they diverge as they advance, until their tips are widely separated. The bladder being empty, as, indeed, he advises it should be, the contact or closure of the circuit is then made, when the portion within the cavity of the bladder is moved about so as to be applied for a few minutes to all the sides of that viscus. It is then withdrawn in the reverse manner, i. e., the current is first discontinued, the adjustable wires are withdrawn within the insulating canula, and then the whole is withdrawn much as an ordinary catheter. (See pp. 398,680,and E,Notel.) Faradaizing the rectum, and also the muscles of the anus for preventing involuntary stools, or prolapsus of the rectum, and for the paralysis of the sphincter and levator ani, he recom- mends the use of another olive-shaped excitor, kept exclusively for this pui'pose. "While the one electrode is within the rectum, let the other be on the skin near or over the circular muscle fibres, if the patient can bear it. He advises the precaution of first clearing the rectum by an enema, before the operation. Besides, the instrument excitor should be well insulated, except at its olive tip, as the margins of the rectum and sphincter ani are most exquisitely sensitive to any electric excitation, and therefore will otherwise produce unbearable tenesmus. This is always to be very carefully avoided.