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

that anaesthesia might be produced by the inverse continuous current of electricity, if of sufficient tension to pass along the nerve toe are desirous of depriving of sensation" But, again, as to the tivo classes of all kinds of the neuralgic for electric treatments. This interests me much, for it accords with my own experience. No doubt this affection may be set up in an organism under quite different circumstances, as in astenia as well as in hyperamea, and, indeed, in opposite conditions of the nerves, or body, in many other respects ; therefore it is not strange that a different change of nerve polarity should be required for the restoration. The careful and correct application of the cur- rent itself in a given way, is the best diagnosis, for it will speedily restore or aggravate. In the latter case, change the direction of the current, and you triumph. Should you fail now again, you may judge that there is exposure, bad habit, functional derange- ment, inflammation, or organic disease. Case 1. — An elderly clergyman, who had long been very sub- ject to sciatica, of a truly neuralgic kind, having heard of my mode of treating such cases by galvano-puncture, came from a distant part of the state, last spring, for the purpose of putting himself under my care, and remaining in the city until cured. I inserted six of the four-inch gold needles, as three pairs, along the course of the great nerve trunk of the right thigh, every other day, for three times. In one week he was so well that he concluded to return home. He writes me that he has been quite well of it ever since. This was a chronic case. Case 2. — A lady in the prime of life, residing in Dorches- ter, but a patient of Dr. Bartlett, of Roxbury, about forty years of age, was suffering so much from lumbago and sciatica on both sides, that she was almost helpless; and being fleshy, she could not get in or out of bed, nor even arise from her invalid chair, without assistance. She had long tried internal medicines, blisters, tincture of iodine, mustard, and cold water. I was sent for by the advice of her physician, and applied (or rather inserted) the long gold needles for electro-puncture, over the most painful parts, and used in this case a very mild primary direct current, but held steadily in contact with the silver wires in the eye of