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

induction currents, and that by ceaseless labile movements, for one or two minutes more, using large, soft, wet sponge elec- trodes. The tip of the finger of the operator, or the two small sponge-tipped ivory electrodes, are best for conveying the current to the affected muscles. Dr. Meyer, of Berlin,* has recently treated some of these cases successfully, by electricity. He placed the negative pole of electro-magnetism in the hand of the patient, and then employed a very small, moistened sponge as the positive electrode, which he applied directly to the skin of the closed eye, as near as he could to the paralyzed muscles. For reaching the rectus interims he held this electrode to the inner angle of the eye ; and for the muscle obliguus superior, he placed it beneath the trochlea. He thus treated, it appears, a patient for Dr. Von Graefe, who had been afflicted for five months with double vision, from a paralysis of the rectus interims and obliquns superior. Dr. Meyer treated another case that had suffered for some four years with double vision from paralyzed muscles of the eye, in whom he effected a complete cure in six weeks, by electricity. The author would recommend great care in attempting to employ Galvanic or Faradaic currents about the eye. It is probably more wise and prudent to employ first the labile induction current in all these cases, and that moderately; but still do I know that the former can succeed, where the latter may fail. (See pp. 231, 266, 641, and Appendix D, Note 3.) Paralysis of the Facial Nerve, {Portio Dura.) There are, then, two kinds of facial palsy. The one kind we have just been examining and treating. But the true and sim- ple paralysis of the portio dura, in whole or in part, but outside of the cranial cavity, and hence most suitable for electric treat- ment, is characterized and known on the one hand by the want of power over the eyelids, so that the eye cannot shut by the action of its own muscles ; and on the other, as not attended with loss of taste, nor is there numbness in the tongue, nor diffi- culty of swallowing bread. When this face affection comes on * Deutsche Klinik, 1856, No. 38.