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

sensation and of muscular motion have continued up to the present time. At present, there are numbness of the hand and arm, and entire loss of power in the extensors of the hand, which are also completely flexed when the arm is raised. All the muscles of the arm have less power than natural." " This case was treated with galvanism, and the patient left the hospital better ; having gained some power in the extensors, and that of the flexors being nearly restored to their healthy state. It was some time, however, before the improvement became so manifest." Case of Traumatic Paralysis.—Jane B., aged twenty-six, had fallen, in February last, down the stairs in a ship's cabin, and struck the top of her head and the back of her neck. She complained, from that time, of unceasing pain in her head, and presented a complete hemiplegia of the muscles of the left side of the face. By testing the case with electro-magnetic currents, we found that when directed to the palsied muscles of the face, they produced almost no contraction of the muscles, although the intensity of the current was so high as to produce all the pain she could possibly bear. This absence of electro-muscular contraction, in some such instances, is valuable as a guide in diagnosis ; for here it indicated the case to be a traumatic paral- ysis of the portio dura. Electrical treatments were, therefore, ventured upon, and, in short, the case entirely recovered. It is to be remembered, that, in cases of traumatic paralysis, this lost electro-excitability of the muscles and their nerve trunks is found more marked soon after the occurrence of the lesion. Dr. Duchenne gives an account of a case of questiona- ble paralysis, in which, from ascertaining the loss of the electro- muscular contractility in the left arm and shoulder, and in the absence of other assignable cause, he diagnosticated a traumatic palsy, from a lesion somewhere in the nerve trunks of that arm. He afterwards discovered an exostosis in the neurilemma which compressed certain branches of the cervical and brachial plexus, which he treated by electro-magnetic currents and other reme- dies, and so brought about a complete cure. Case of George K., thirteen years of age, son of an offi- 45