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

aneurism. But by observing the decidedly nervous, hypochon- driacal, or hysterical state of the patient, we need feel no ap- prehension. As the nerves become toned, and the strength is improved, these symptoms will vanish. Hysterical spasmodic affections there are, among which are a curious class of mal- adies which often prove exceedingly troublesome, as aphonia, and croupy laryngeal affections, and likewise sobbing and sneezing. Case. — Cornelia B., aged eighteen, came under treatment, complaining of severe pain in the dorsal region. She was a fleshy and stout-built girl, but looking in some sense deli- cate and unhealthy. Her business was that of a seamstress, and of late years she had run a stitching machine, in the employ of Hovey & Co. She reported that her pain and ex- treme weakness had existed for the last year previous, so as to quite disable her for work at times ; particularly did this occur just before her catamenial periods ; the pain occupying the middle of the back, and along the region of the spine, which was so extremely tender to the slightest touch or pressure, that any application of the hand to that portion of the back, even over the dress, would cause most disagreeable sensations, and if applied directly to the skin, bring on a turn of great suffering. When more closely examined, I found that this pain was con- fined to the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth dorsal vertebrae ; for while on any other portion of the spine she would bear even forcible pressure, the least touch here caused her to scream with pain, so extreme was the sensitiveness of this portion of the back. But mark —■ if her attention was suddenly and strongly drawn off to some other distant object or subject, I could carefully and adroitly glide my hand from a sound region to this exquisite- ly tender region, and handle it roughly for that time without producing more effect there than elsewhere. This fairly diag- nosticated the case as what is called local hysteria in the more common acceptation of that term. Her treatment may be summed up thus : To have one seance daily, and at the same time to continue the medicine that she had been taking from her family physician, viz., Griffith's myrrh