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

ones (though their irritability, it might be said, had not been exhausted) had lost half their bulk, were degenerated in tex- ture, and had lost some of their power of contracting. In other cases, too, he found the loss of proper texture always ensuing in the inactive state, before the power of contraction was lost. And it is doubtless the same in man. A muscle which, by no fault of its own, but through circiimstances external to itself, has been prevented from acting, becomes shortly incapable of acting even when the external obstacles to action are removed. Hence, I think, we may deduce a rule which ought to be acted on in practice. When a person has had hemiplegia, one com- monly sees that long after the brain has to all appearances recovered its power, or even through all the rest of life, the paralyzed limbs remain incapable of action — as motionless as at the first attack. Now, it is not likely that this abiding paral- ysis is invariably, nor even usually,.the consequence of any con- tinuing disease of the brain ; rather we must ascribe it to the imperfect condition into which the muscles have fallen during their inaction. So long as the state of the brain makes volun- tary action impossible, the muscles are suffering atrophy ; then, when the brain recovers, they are not in a state to obey its impulse. They are degenerate ; and thus, their inaction con- tinuing, they degenerate more and more, and all remedy may become then impossible. If this be mostly true, Dr. Reid's ex- periments suggest a good part of the remedy. "When muscles are paralyzed through affection of the nervous system, we ought to give them artificial exercise. They should often be put in action by electricity and otherwise, and that under repeated efforts of the guiding influence of the will. Their action, though thus artificial, will insure their nutrition ; and then, when the nervous system also recovers, they may be in a con- dition ready to act with it. (See Appendix E, F, G.) Wasting Palsy. This affection has but a recent history in medical works, as the earliest well-defined cases are limited to the present century.