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

" In another very interesting case of paralysis of one leg, the affection had been supposed to be partial paraplegia, and there- fore spinal; but on applying the test of a galvanic current from Cruikshank's battery, the muscles of the paralytic limb contract- ed, when no motion observable could be produced by it in those of the sound limb. The paralysis, he thought, was thus shown to be cerebral; and by close investigation of the case, it was found that the patient had felt tingling of the hand on the same side of the paralyzed leg. It is here worthy of remark, that on using Heardcr's electro-magnetic apparatus, upon the same case, the effects were reversed! The unaffected limb was now jerked violently, when, with the same current, the paralytic limb was scarcely moved (?) " Dr. Hall therefore adopted the following rules as law in his view: — " 1. That cerebral paralysis may exist alone. " 2. That spinal paralysis of course implies cerebral paralysis. " 3. That ganglionic paralysis may exist with or without mus- cular spinal paralysis. In case of a transverse division, or dis- ease of the tri-facial nerve, we have ganglionic paralysis; and in a case where the digital nerve was injured, I found the nail ceased to grow as formerly. But as spinal paralysis implies cerebral paralysis, it also implies ganglionic paralysis. I have," he says, " at this moment a patient, who, from inflammation of the sciatic nerve from a cold, has lost the power of the limb, and the muscles are absolutely unaffectable by any galvanism — are atrophied, heterotrophied, and, I suppose, are changed into fat. Now, by restoring the healthy condition of the nerve, will the morbid change of structure undergo resto- ration ? This is a question. It will require research and experience ; but I propose shortly to add to this present brief sketch some more ample details." But he did not live to accomplish it. Dr. Marshall Hall was thus probably the first to direct the attention of the medical world to the employment of electric currents as a peculiar means of diagnosis for and between cer- tain paralytic diseases. But as he assumed, " that the brain is