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

brain paralysis. These cases are not reckoned as suitable or safe for the electro-medical treatments. Early and Late Rigidity, or Tonic Muscular Contractions from Brain Lesions. — Here Dr. Todd makes a marked dis- tinction between the " early rigidity " that attends some cere- bral paralyses, which occurs soon after the attack, and those cases of " late rigidity" which are connected also with cerebral paralysis, but occur only after a certain time. In the former, or early rigid contraction, it is shown most usually in the biceps muscle of the arm, and in the hamstring muscles of the thigh, but usually greater in the upper limb than in the lower. This varies in amount, in different cases, from a mere increase in plumpness up to a strong contraction that is almost tetanic. The circulation is found, however, as vigorous as in health, and the heat is at about par; but the paralyzed muscles are generally more responsive to the electric stimulus than those muscles of the healthy opposite side. It is quite obvious, says Dr. Althaus, in his excellent treatise on medical electricity, that in a case of this kind there is not the slightest reason for attempting the therapeutical application of electricity, which would, in all probability, aggravate the symptoms, arising, as they do, from an irritative lesion of the brain. I will quote him further, nearly in his own words. " As in one class of cases of cerebral paralysis, the muscles can take on early rigidity, so also in another class of such affections, the muscles may be exempt from this, but ultimately present the state of late rigidity. Muscles of such cases, hav- ing been flaccid and wasted for a certain length of time, — that is, since the first attack, — then gradually acquire more tension, and become shortened. The tendency to assume this rigid state of muscle, under these circumstances, is more marked in the arm than in the leg, and more in the flexors than in the exten- sors. It is generally supposed to be caused by the gradual shrinking of the cyst, which acts as an irritating foreign body in the brain. In most of these cases the electric treatment should be cautiously resorted to, or not at all. But in some cases of long standing, an electric excitation of those muscles which are