Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
503/740
- Publication/creation
- Boston : Ticknor and Fields, 1861.
- Physical description
- 3 unnumbered pages, 716 pages, 2 leaves of plates : illustrations ; 26 cm
- Contributors
-
Garratt, Alfred C. (Alfred Charles), 1813?-1891
Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library
- Notes
-
3d ed. has title: Medical electricity
Includes index and testimonials
- Type/technique
- Electronic books
- Subjects
-
Electrophysiology
Electrotherapeutics
- Attribution and usage
-
This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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through the sensations, and that chiefly through those of the
special kind. He contended, finally, that we must recognize the
existence of a third class of nerve fibres, having their special
seat or centres in the ganglia of sense, and independent alike of
the cerebral and of the spinal. Indeed, Dr. Copcland, as early
as 1825, advanced the doctrine of a third class of nerves, which
he conjectured to be prolongations of the ganglionic fibres, ex-
tending by such subtile ramifications into all parts of the body
as" to escape ocular demonstration, yet as evidently existing.
Dr. Todd also recognizes the necessity of this extension of the
theory of a " distinct and continuous nerve-fibre system," if it be
adopted at all; but adds, "it is difficult to admit the existence
of three orders of nerve fibrils in integument and muscle, which,
to be effective, must all have the same relation to the elements
of the muscles."
But if we now leave all these hypotheses, and look closely
at demonstration, we see, concisely, two or three well-defined
propositions, viz. : —
First, that the brain, or some part of it, is absolutely essential
to the production of mental nervous actions ; or, in other words,
the actions of volition and sensation cannot take place without
the brain.
Second, that the vesicular (gray matter) is the true dynamic
nervous matter, and that which is absolutely essential to, and
the source of, the development of all nervous power in human
beings.
Third, we conclude that the anatomy of the spinal cord (as
we now understand it) teaches us to regard each segment of
it as the centre of its own proper nerves; all centripetal im-
pressions being received in the first instance by it, and all
motor impulses finally proceeding from it ; and, at the same
time, the connections established through commissural strands
between the different segments of the cord itself, and between
the cord on the one hand, and the cerebrum and cerebellum on
the other, the impressions first conveyed to the cord, are carried
on to the sensorium so as to produce sensations; whilst motor
impulses originating in the cerebrum, are brought to act upon