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

along- the course of the nervous tracts. Third. Neuralgia, after setting out from this point of origin, may very soon extend to other divisions of the affected nerve. Hysterical pluralgia only shows itself after epigastralgia, and then rachialgia also has already long existed. Pluralgia (muscular hyperesthesia) usu- ally constitutes only a more or less considerable inconvenience, and however long it may persist, it is at last dispersed without inducing phlegmasia of the contents of the thorax. (See G.) V. Thoracalgia. — Among the four hundred cases observed critically, only twenty-seven complained of pain in the muscles at the anterior part of the thorax. In twelve of these it occu- pied only the left side, and in two, the right; while in thirteen, all the anterior portion of the chest was affected. This form of hyperesthesia is usually one of the last that appears, and its rarity is probably due to the slight part which the pectoral mus- cles (wherein it is seated) take in the expression of depressing emotions. This form is not very persistent, rarely disturbs res- piration, but recurs from time to time, and gives cause to much anxiety from the patients fearing that they have disease of the heart. Its independence of neuralgia may be judged by the fact that of one hundred and fifty hysterical patients with rachi- algia at the level of the first six dorsal vertebrae, only twenty- seven complained of pain at the anterior part of the thorax. VI. Ccelia/gia. — The muscular hyperesthesia of any patient is so termed when it has its seat in the walls of the abdomen. The pains of this character have long been known to authors, but they have beeu attributed to lesions of the sympathetic nerves, or ascribed to the underlying viscera. The author met with it in one hundred and ninety-six of four hundred cases of hysterical females. In forty-two, it affected both sides; in seventy-six, the left side only; and in thirty-four, the right side alone. This pain usually engages a considerable portion of the muscles affected, and is continuous while in the erect posture, being much increased by movements or pressure, but relieved by lying down and keeping still. In many instances this affec- tion has been sadly mistaken for painful affections of the ovary; and it is such mistakes that have given rise to the supposition