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

term " hysteria." If examined under the etiological aspect, then is hysteria in no wise more exactly specified. Says Pro- fessor Schutzenberger, of Strasburg, " If there is a want of agreement as to the range of symptoms, there is still more in respect to their actual cause." In his recently published work on the etiology and pathology of hysteria, he shows from a series of facts investigated extensively, nearly these results, viz.,— 1. That a certain local nervous excitement, which is generally continuous, may and usually does become the organic cause of intermittent functional disturbances that are manifested either as local pain, local or general convulsive attacks, with or'without the loss of sensation or motion, — one or both, — but without the central organs of the nervous system, in general, being the subjects of any permanent pathological condition. 2. That, among women, excitement of the ovaries is the most frequent cause of this kind of disturbance, acting much as other reflex actions. 3. We recognize, clinically, the reality of this cause, since pressure made so as to be deep-seated over the ovaries will in- duce local pain and reflex convulsive action. 4. Other local irritation, or hyperesthesia, may produce anal- ogous phenomena; an attentive examination for which in each case may discover such centres of irritation. 5. These local irritations, capable of propagating an excite- ment, when simple and especially when of the ovary, are af- fections of curability, unless they have been long neglected, or are conjoined with incurable organic states. 6. In practice, it is of the first consequence to determine the, source of the local excitement; then directly to diminish the excited condition of the nerves of the part which form the focus or nebulas whence the local irritation is propagated to the sys- tem. The intermittent nervous excitement of freaks, pains, or convulsions, demands but secondary and palliative measures, ceasing as they do when the local irritation is relieved, or tem- porarily exhausted; imless, indeed, under the influence of the frequent repetition of this propagated pathological condition, a morbid degree of excitability of the spinal cord becomes sec-