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

tiously employed, a fair test of the irritability of the muscular fibre in paralytic limbs ? and consequently, diagnostic of these two kinds of paralyses ? " In the prosecution of these questions many precautions are required. In the first place, it will always be observed that the patient is timid on the first application of the galvanic current. The effect of surprise and sudden sensation, in wincing, starting, &c, must be carefully distinguished from that of the galvanic influence on the nerves and muscular fibre. " 2. The degree of the galvanic force should never be — be- cause it never need be — such as to give pain, far less such as to jerk the limb out of the basin. Such violence must complicate the phenomenon, and confuse the results. The galvanic current force should be the mildest which can produce an obvious effect. " 3. The first effect of a paralytic seizure is one of shock ; probably of diminished irritability of the muscular fibre. Time must be allowed for the restoration, as well as for the augmenta- tion of this property. It is, therefore, only after a certain lapse of time, that it is proper, or perhaps safe, to apply galvanism, es- pecially if the patient be timid. " 4. Within a very few days of the paralytic seizure, there is, frequently, a rapid and considerable recovery of voluntary mo- tion ; afterwards the recovery is much slower, and much less marked. The former is the recovery from shock; the latter, diminution of the actual disease. " 5. Lastly, in some cases there is NO recovery. In these cases I think it probable that there may be no augmentation — perhaps no restoration — of the irritability of the muscular fibre. In one such case, after the lapse of seven weeks, the muscles of the para- lytic arm remained less susceptible to the proper galvanic influ- ence than the unaffected limb. Dr. Hall then relates several cases in which the galvanic current was used in diagnosis, by testing the irritability of paralyzed muscles. In the first case, what had been supposed to be paralysis of the facial nerve was shown to be cerebral paralysis, for the muscles of the paralyzed side were more affected by the galvanic current than those of the sound side. In a case of a real and simple facial paralysis, the mus- cles of the Mwparalyzed, healthy side, were most affected.