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

where an abscess results from caries of the vertebrae, but the accumulation gravitating downward through the fascia, it may and often does occupy the same situation on the pelvis as that which is occupied by the collection of pus resulting from sacro-iliac disease ; but then there is tenderness over the affected portion, or the vertebra projects, or the spinal column has lost its flexibility, and now moves stiffly as a whole. 6. Disease of the pelvic bones, and disease of the sacro-iliac articulation, may occur entirely separate or together. The for- mer may commence at the crista ilii, the tuber ischii, or at the acetabulum, which latter is the more usual scat of this disease, and then the symptoms are like ordinary coxalgia. By thus merely calling the attention, by this concise rehearsal, of young medical gentlemen to the possibility of such conditions, I trust to prevent them from falling into any serious error while treat- ing the less or more grave nervous affections of the hip and pelvis. But, in all faithfulness, I should have mentioned one other affection that may assimilate either or all of these diseases. I refer to the hysterical affection of the hip joint. But here you will be put upon your guard by the age and sex of the patient, by other manifestations of hysteria, and, more especially, by the excessive superficial tenderness over the whole haunch, hip, and tkiffh, but no pain on strongly pressing- the limb from the foot towards the pelvis; besides, the hysteric-hip patient has not the worn aspect of those really diseased patients, where the car- tilages are ulcerating, and thus causing the pain. Neuralgic or " Hysterical Affections of the Joints." This condition, surely, refers to the nerves, not to the vessels of the affected part. As we have general affections of the vas- cular system, as well as local, so we may have morbid condi- tions of the nervous system, either as general or local. There is a local affection of the nerves called the neuralgic state, as tic douloureux ; and I believe there is a general affection of the nerves as manifested in nervousness and in hysteria. But in the hysterical affections of joints the nervous affection is both local