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

branches of a nerve, occurring in paroxysms of irregular dura- tion, and after regular or irregular intervals. The pain is some- times slight and obtuse at its commencement, and then aug- ments in violence, becoming sharp, darting, or lacerating, which is attended with a peculiar and excessively acute plunging or constrictive sensation, which darts at intervals through the pain- ful part. But more frequently the attack of pain is sudden, which is sometimes preceded either by an itching, tickling, prickling heat or numbness, or by slight and fugitive pains ; any of which may recur whenever the paroxysm of pain is less. It may be confined to the very trunk of the nerve, but as often extends itself to the integumentary ramifications, and even to the terminations of the nerves in the superficial muscles, (mus- cle hyperassthesia.) Sometimes it affects only a few of the branches of a nerve, or even one or two, merely, of the fibrils. When severe, an attack of neuralgia may be attended with tremors, or spasms, cramps, or convulsive motions of those mus- cles depending on the affected nerves ; but there is neither red- ness, heat, nor swelling. When these latter phenomena do oc- cur, it is a more or less neuritis, or inflammation of the nerve. The paroxysms may be extremely variable, sometimes intermit- ting, at others remitting, occurring after regular or irregular intervals. A person who has once suffered from it is liable to its return, although he may have been completely restored. The malady is acute as regards the paroxysms, but so great a liability to their recurrence makes it generally considered a peculiarly chronic disease. Neuralgia, then, is most liable to affect those nerves of the head, trunk, or extremities, which, are located superficially, and hence are most exposed to vicissitudes, and such as are sur- rounded by bone or loose cellular tissues. Neuralgia may also affect the visceral nerves, as those of the heart, diaphragm, stom- ach, liver, spleen, bowels, uterus, kidneys, testicles, &c. And mus- cles, (like all other organs which receive mixed nerve filaments with motor nerves, that emanate from the cerebro-spinal axis,) enjoy in health, and suffer in disease, a sensibility peculiar to muscle fibres, if still in communication with the spine and brain