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

tions, when not complicated with inflammation or ulceration of the adjacent tissues. There is a kind of chronic rheumatism which we not unfre- quently meet with, that shows its peculiar character by deposits in the cutis, in the sub-cutaneous cellular tissue, and also in the cellular tissue of the muscles. These considerable effusions very speedily become hard callosities, and are not only felt but seen, situated in isolated spots, or else are numerous in a given space, or conglomerated so as to cover a larger extent, and so near the skin, or actually involving the under structure of it, that a fold of the skin cannot be pinched up over such spots. These are attended with harassing pains, and even loss of power, to helplessness; while other cases suffer little from them. But if early treated by localized electric currents, these lumps can be solved away, without being scattered to any other part. A brisk current, directed through the spots, is required, and that con- tinued for a longer time at once on each callous spot, than we are in the habit of using the current for any other purpose. Rheumatism does not appertain to cell life, as its character- istics of pain, shifting of seat of swelling and of the pain, for- mation of lithates and its deposits, do certainly indicate. Rheu- matisms which are more frequently presented for electrical treatment are of the chronic forms. In all reason and fairness, too much is expected of electro-therapeutics in most affections for which they are resorted to; and particularly is this true in those cases where there is a rheumatic taint, discrasia, or diathe- sis, for this special condition or bias of the organism is always giving occasion for fresh attacks. Notwithstanding, we are pre- pared to show the preeminent power of electricity in pure forms of rheumatism of every sort, excepting only the actively acute. The acute form of rheumatism comes on with fever, or perhaps even before the appearance of febrile symptoms, with excruciating pain in the larger joints, which are also swollen and more or less red. This may shift to another joint, — the whole lasting some six weeks. One of the essential symptoms of acute rheu- matism is, that the skin is daily or nightly bathed in a profuse perspiration, and yet is hot, nor is the pulse or the pain in the