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

bcr are relieved by vomiting. But a sudden and new mental diversion will more surely relieve it than all the foregoing; and electric currents, applied according to the rules to be observed iu other hyperesthesia, will relieve obstinate headaches more uniformly, and that with a curative tendency, than all other known means together; but to this end the case needs to be studied, and the treatment must necessarily be more or less continued. In treating inveterate headaches, I more usually employ the primary current of galvanism than the secondary current of electro-magnetism, although this latter can, for it does, succeed in very many cases. But I must here confess there is no small difficulty in giving directions how to decide, in a given case, without trial, as to which of these currents is best adapted to be successful. Moreover, I here recognize the law, that must be observed in the treatment of all painful nervous affections, and that is, that a larger class is benefited by the direct current, while a smaller class is only reached with a truly remedial effect by the inverse current. For instance, for one patient I apply one large and soft electrode to the base -of the occiput,or a little lower, while the other is at the stomach, or down the lumbar region, so as to embrace the posterior cervical ganglia; then a down- running current of bearable strength, — say one eighth strength of electro-magnetic current, — or a stream of ten Darnell's or twenty Garratt's elements, (without being reversed,} for thirty seconds ; then a recess of ten seconds; and then applied again in the same direction once, twice, or even seven times, if the head pain does not begin to yield. In another case, if such a seance is managed with a down-running current, it will succeed all the better. Generally speaking, the fair, the fleshy, and the hys- terical simply require the down-running current, and that very light, and a short seance ; while the lean, or the hardy, the cold in temperature, and the melancholic in temperament, seem to require the spring of the reflex action from an up-running cur- rent, whatever the battery or apparatus employed to give it. Where we are thwarted in the desired results, the electrodes may be positioned so as to run the current from the nape of the 36