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

plegia, but was also of late threatened with immediate amau- rosis,— I say, I said to him, that if lie did not desist from his prolonged or too frequent sexual intercourse, at least for a few months, and until his nervous system could rally and recover its vitality, he certainly would not be benefited, but, on the other hand, was liable to become more seriously paralytic, and a blind man ; and, therefore, it was only on these conditions that I would attempt to treat him. Such being my deepest convictions, he, the next day, after consulting with his wife, came into my office, stated his perplexity, and pleaded for easier terms. He finally concluded, however, to return home again, to give up all treatment, and "go it blind." We know also, that, on the other hand, it is a great fact, a very physiological laiv, that whenever muscles are but slightly used, or lie long inactive, they become soft, fatty, and weak, or else they waste or degenerate; and this, whether the inactivity depends on paralysis, through affection of the nerves or nervous centres, or from simple inaction, or fixation of the parts they should animate and move. The degenerative process may be so rapid that, in a fortnight even, muscles paralyzed by some hemiplegia may present a manifest change of color. Now, according to the views of Dr. James Paget, Professor of Anatomy, the course of events in these cases appears to be, that the want of exercise of the muscle, whether paralyzed or fixed, makes its due nutrition impossible ; and the atrophy thus brought about is the cause of the loss of irritability of the muscle— i. e., of the loss of its capacity for contracting. For the experiments of Dr. John Reid plainly show that loss of contractile power in a paralyzed muscle is due, directly, to its imperfect nutrition, and only indirectly to the loss of connection with the nervous centres. When he divided the nerves of the hind legs of a living frog, and then left one limb inactive, but gave the muscles of the other frequent and regular exercise by electrizing with the primary current the lower end of its nerve, he found (to state the case very briefly) that at the end of two months the exercised muscles retained their weight and texture and their capacity of contraction, while the inactive