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

while the negative was pressed, for one minute, deeply into the glutei over the great ischiatic nerve trunk ; then, removing the positive to a place over the femoral nerve trunk, under Poupert's ligament, while the negative was removed to the inner ankle, and the current let on as before. The cauda equina appeared to be the very seat of the difficulty, notwithstanding a dull pain in the head and a somewhat hemiplegic appearance of the dis- ease ; therefore the negative pole was mainly planted there for circle treatments, also when directing the current down either limb. He was advised to keep dry and warm, and this method of application of electricity to be kept up regularly every day. In three weeks' time he appeared, and said he felt, like a new man; the trembling of nmscles entirely gone, the pains were scarce and far between ; he was able to walk and move about with considerable freedom and ease to himself—to continue the electric seance every day for ten days more. This man completely recovered, and is now well for doing business, and possesses remarkable powers of endurance. The cauda equina, it must be noted also, is a most frequent seat of protracted neuralgia, without necessarily involving either the spinal cord or its theca in any change of structure. The evidences of such neuralgia are aching or burning pains in the loins; stooping gait; tremblings in the muscles of the loins and thighs, particularly after fatigue, when there is also expe- rienced great weakness there, but not actual paralysis. Now, in all these cases, the circle treatment will best wash away the pain-causing condition, whether we employ the galvanic or the electro-magnetic currents. (See F, in Appendix.) Dolor spinalis, or that pain which occurs in the back, par- ticularly in the spinous processes of the vertebrae, and which is so characteristically augmented by pressure, and therefore put down always as " spinal disease," is not, by any means, always truly so ; for I find, among these cases, a large majority of instances of simple and true rheumatic periostites, in vary- ing stages and degrees, from the dull ache and lameness of chronic rheumatism, to the very acuteness and twingings of neuralgia, and sometimes even equalling the burning and throb-