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

ninth ribs, with the seventh and eighth intercostal spaces; never shooting along the nerve course, but rather darting deeply back through the chest to the back, or into the tbroat, in the former case seeming to give rise to the inter-scapular pain; in the lat- ter, being associated with the hysterical globus. It is rarely ten- der on pressure, and it is not regularly periodical. He says, that uterine disorder does frequently accompany the true iufra- mammary pain; but that it should be the cause of it, is impos- sible, for these two conditions cannot stand in relation to each other as cause and effect, as either does exist without the other. The infra-mammary pain is thought by some to be one of the most common symptoms of " incipient lateral curvature of the spine," and should always lead us to investigate the state of the spine, whenever we bear of this ceaseless though variable pain. But this, to my mind, has been exaggerated as to frequency of occurrence. These being facts, and for other weighty reasons, Dr. Cootc infers that true infra-mammary pain is a mere symp- tom of a generally depressed or diminished state of the nervous endurance ; and, secondly, that it is one of a group of symptoms intimately connected with the deranged vaso-motory system, and therefore with some vascular derangement. The conclusions finally arc, that true infra-mammary pain is simply a species of peripheral neuralgia, having, probably, its origin in mal-nutrition of the smaller nerves and blood vessels. The immediate cause of this kind of vascular derangement con- sists in disordered enervation of the smaller arteries of the whole body, occasioning irregular spasms and dilatation of their walls — a condition, which, while in the infra-mammary region it occasions neuralgia, in other parts gives rise to chills and flushes, to palpitation, to excessive or to defective secretion, to congestions, to hemorrhages, and to fluxes ; while an analogous state of the nerves of the alimentary canal produces obstinate constipation. The cause of this extensively disordered state of the vaso-motory nerves is to be sought for in the more general conditions and habits of the patient. For obvious reasons, it is more likely to occur in women than in men, yet it does certainly also occur in men, as we often see.