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

neck to the pit of the stomach, or umbilicus; or from the nape of the neck to the dorsal spine, or even as low down as to the sacrum, and thus maintain the current, doicn-running, i. e., direct, by part-minute stages, but always in one direction, what ever that is, when once chosen, and we obtain good results. Indeed such a procedure cannot be systematically adopted with- out some positively sensible results; and even if the headache seems to be awakened to more severity by a given current direction, the work is then half done, for you have obtained a diagnostic test that now guides you in the future, and you will be — you must be — successful in breaking up all merely func- tional, habitual, or periodical headaches, where there is no organic disease, nor any habit persisted in that as constantly perpetuates the malady. Treatment of Neuralgia. — All forms of neuralgia are ob- stinate of cure, or, more properly speaking, are relapsing; the many cases of which, taken in a strict sense, are not diseases in themselves, but appear either as the herald or sequel of some other disease or derangement, and often of a very slight de- rangement. But sometimes, even after the cause is removed, still the neuralgic pains recur, apparently from some abiding changed condition of the nerve, induced at first, as we have said, by some other disease or derangement of functions. But if the neuralgia is caused by wounds of the nerves, by inflammation, by hypertrophy, or by scirrhus of the neurilemma, or from disease of the great nerve centres, or from caries or exostosis of the bony passage through which the nerve passes, then it cannot be expected of any local electric treatments to cure the affection; nor indeed if it arises from any organic disease or existing morbid states of the liver, stomach, kidneys, uterus, or ovaries, &c.; nor yet if the affection is continued from repeated exposure to damp or cold, or from exhausting and irregular in- dulgences, or from over-working habits. But if the neuralgia arose even from some such cause, which is now removed, and the affection is merely a morbid exaltation of sensibility, without structural change or faulty function acting as an exciting cause, or if it is of a rheumatic origin, or of no assignable foreign or