Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
534/740
- 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.
This work has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighbouring rights and is being made available under the Creative Commons, Public Domain Mark.
You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, without asking permission.
The image contains the following text:
heart's action. To this end, he advises the strict maintenance
of the reclining posture ; and when the patient is awake and
conscious, the mind should be tranquillized by every possible
means. He says, again, " You will often be early consulted as to
' some expedient for promoting the restoration of the paralyzed
limbs to their natural condition.' To this question, after having
given a fair trial to the various means which have been proposed,
(in the earlier stages,) I must reply, that I know of nothing
which more decidedly benefits the paralyzed limbs than a regu-
lated system of exercise — active, when the patient is capable of
it; passive, if otherwise. As to the use of electricity, which is
now much in vogue, or the treatment by strychnia, which has
been recommended, I feel satisfied, as the result of a long experi-
ence, that the former requires to be used with much caution,
and that the latter is very apt to do mischief, and never does
good. I have seen cases in which, after the early employment
of electricity for some time, that agent has apparently brought
on pain in the head, and has excited something like an inflam-
matory process in the brain. And so strychnine also will induce
an analogous condition of brain, and will increase the rigidity
of the paralyzed muscles." (See pp. 477-479, Notes B, C.)
Paraplegia.
Paraplegia, we know, is a loss of the power of motion in the
lower limbs, either partial or complete, and usually attended
with inaction of the urinary bladder and rectum, with loss of
power over the sphincters, and often with impairment or entire
loss of sensation. When the affection arises from an injury of
the spinal cord, the accession is sudden; but if from inflamma-
tion and its sequels in the spinal marrow or its membranes, or
if the bones or cartilages of the spine are diseased, then the first
appearance of the paralysis is more gradual. In this latter, there
is first some abnormal sensation, which is soon followed by
numbness, and this by diminished poiver of motion in the lower
extremities, so that one easily trips; cannot stand long; has a
sensation of weight in the limbs, and pains down to the feet.
44