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

late, this is ascertained to be accomplished in some cases by nature alone, under favorable circumstances. It is believed by Marshall Hall, Duchenne, and Remak, that this can be greatly promoted by a correct use of electricity, not only where nature is in some degree tending to restore a solution of continuity, but also in those unfavorable cases where the nerve is, as it were, profoundly stunned, or changed, and has completely lost its capability for action. It has been proved by ample wounds in the living dog, that the nerve is reunited, being entirely new formed through the tissues of the cicatrix. Dr. Brown-Sequard has established by microscopic research, that in some cases where nerve trunks have received an actual solution of continuity, and the paralysis for the time was com- plete, yet the nerve fibres, under favorable circumstances, can become entire again, and continuous through the cicatrix, so as to communicate with the brain in a normal manner. Dr. Prev- ost, as also M. Bernard, have made special observations to this end, by destroying a portion of a nerve trunk in a living dog, and then waiting for a perfect healing, and testing for the reestablished nervous function, then dissecting down upon the spot of previous mutilation, and they find that the nerve fibres are shot across the new growth of the cicatrix so as to completely repair the electro-nervous telegraph, in the order, first of sensation, and then of motion. Thus have we recently learned that a nerve may be cicatrized where it has been divided, and may even be regenerated where it has been de- stroyed ; and if aided by favorable circumstances, it will open for itself a new communication when it has been totally destroyed. First, it must be mentioned, that those paralyses, which Todd, Copeland, Duchenne, and others have called " traumatic," are arranged by Dr. Marshall Hall as " spinal paralysis," and defined by him as that ivhere the mvscles are functionally sep- arated from the spinal cord. All writers agree that the electro- muscular contractility is diminished in these affections, or even totally lost. Dr. M. Hall assumes that a cerebral paralysis can be caused by a disease of the spinal cord; as, for instance,