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

plained of, by the hypochondriacal and the hysterical, is doubtless seated here. Their case is very generally viewed either as mostly imagined, or else as remarkably exaggerated. This view of their case is taken, all the more, because their general health appears so good, or rather because it is so little impaired. But these, to them, abnormal sensations and indescribable sufferings, enga- ging the entire life attention of the patient, develop a persistent despondency or peculiarity, with a ceaseless apprehension. But to other persons, these complaints being viewed usually in the light or connection of very slight evidence or appearance of real ailment, often lead to a sincere belief in their want of reality; while, in fact, they should be viewed, as all needful evidence of a greatly impaired balance of action, in the great chain of ganglionic nerves. Dr. Copeland thinks it is a state of asthe- nia of this part of the nervous system, and that associated with a morbid exaltation (hyperesthesia) of its physiological sensi- bility, which makes it a true neuralgia, and not unfrequcntly attended with some hidden functional or structural lesion of one or more important internal organ, and more particularly of the organs subservient to the perpetuation of organic life. (F, G.) Infra-mammary Pain. — Dr. Coote, of London, says he has closely analyzed a series of some fifty cases of infra-mammary pain, and now finds it necessary to distinguish between two kinds of painful affections, to which the infra-mammary region is liable. The first class, he thinks, should be designated as " inter- costal neuralgia," for it is liable to affect any region of the tho- racic walls. The character of this pain is acute, plunging, paroxysmal. It is seated in one or more intercostal spaces, and mostly where the cutaneous branches of the nerves are most freely distributed, sometimes shooting around the chest, as if above the course of the nerve and its ramifications. Here there is superficial tenderness, or tenderness on pressure, or there is periodical pain. (See Appendix G.) The second class of infra-mammary pain that Dr. Coote wishes to call our attention more particularly to, is a dull, aching pain, that is seated, being situated in one definite locality under the left breast, and extending generally over the seventh, eighth, and