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

especially those of muscles; particularly if they do not com- pletely yield to correct electric treatments, provided always the habits of the patient will not account for them. As we are led to be suspicious of insidious lesions of, or formations in, the brain, from the ugly muscular neuralgias of the shoulder, so should the severe neuralgic pains of the muscles of the loins or thighs always put us on our guard, at least by a suspicion of the existence of softening or other organic lesions of the cord, or its membranes. Neuralgia of the skin (true hyperesthesia of the sentient nerves) is frequently noticed in connection with some eruption, as herpes; also in most hysterical cases. The sensation is ex- quisite sensitiveness to every touch, or intense prickling, or insuf- ferable burning, or true pains in the skin. This is often alter- nated with numbness, &c. (See Appendix G, Note 5.) A neuralgic affection of the periosteum of the bones, I am seriously led to believe, is more frequent than recognized. When observed, there is too ready a disposition to attribute it to mercury or to syphilis. True, it is very often, in part at least, rheumatic; but it is equally true, that the periosteum of the skull, teeth, and of the shafts of bones do present true, uncom- plicated neuralgic pains. (See Appendix P, Note 1.) Neuralgia may attack the ganglionic nerves, and hence most visceral neuralgias, with but few exceptions, may be referred to this medium. We find presenting in practice cases that properly come under this caption, that manifest pains mostly in the head, and constitute one large class of the neuralgic headaches. These are the plunging and bewildering head-pains, that now and then a patient of delicate constitution or of high nervous endowment or temperament has to suffer in regular or irregular and often recurring paroxysms, for years together. The attacks are usually intermitting; but I have had some patients who suffered for many years, with remissions it is true, but never entirely free from the pain. Light, heat, cold, mental or moral emotions, and the state of the* stomach aggravate it, and at any time provoke to a paroxysm, the same as in any simple and true neuralgia. Is it, then, an excessive exaltation of sensibility in the ganglionic 34*