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

repeated every alternate week. Rashness and timidity are equally to be avoided in the treatment of nervous diseases. One may push his antiphlogistic treatment so far in some slight case as to debilitate his patient unnecessarily, while in another case the same treatment would not have been severe enough to conquer. Another may err in adopting only palliatives, or mere soothing and temporary relief, where the case, on the contrary, demanded most active and prompt treatment to insure a cure. Therefore, whether the case be acute or chronic, the skill of the practitioner will be shown by the correctness of his opinion as to the seat, the nature, and intensity of the affection, and by the precision and judgment with which he selects and applies the remedial agents at his command — doing neither too little nor too much, but doing right, and at the right time. If he strikes a vigorous blow, he does it with just sufficient force — enough and no more — to produce the effect intended; and then he fails not to follow up the advantage gained by calling to his aid such other appliances as are found to have power to complete the restoration. These are our general principles, and are in- tended to apply as well in the treatment of any other nervous disease as for sciatica. To this end we see the importance of a more intimate ac- quaintance with electro-physiology and electro-pathology, and with the peculiar symptoms and treatment of the nerves, for dealing faithfully and satisfactorily with these diseases, either in their idiopathic or traumatic derangement. This will form the sec- ond chapter or " act" in the work of treating the grand malady of sciatica, as well as all other nerve affections. Now we come to the third and last " act," which alone is the work and special province of electro-therapeutics. Here let me forestall the older and erroneous notions of " temporary relief" by electricity. Dr. Rood recently said in his excellent disserta- tion on the subject, that sciatica " is, as a general rule, and almost without exception, neither a gouty nor a rheumatic affection; and I am fully persuaded," he says," after carefully studying the subject, and watching the course and character of the malady in all its forms, that those who hope to cure it by a special medica-