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

In 1795 was delineated to the medical world the first example known. But we are often led to query what could have been the nature of those cases of " withered hand " which received, at the hands of Christ, the compassionate cure by miracle ? Says Sir Charles Bell, " This is an obscure subject." To this day, it is looked upon by physicians, that wasting palsy is owing to " defective nutrition ;" but it is evidently more than this, for there is a rapidly progressive diminution of both bulk and power of the affected muscle, or muscle group. There is — there must be — some Malnutrition, some perverted and devouring action. Says Dr. Roberts, of London, cases of excessive wasting palsy of the muscles of one or more limbs, independent of any well- defined cause, have, from time to time, been observed; and records of these are found scattered in various medical works. They have been, until recently, introduced as " extraordinary," or anomalous cases, and are referred to in systematic treatises as " creeping palsy," or as " lead palsy without lead," " peripheric paralysis," or " local palsy," or " progressive palsy." This progressive wasting paralysis does not extend to neigh- boring parts of the leg or arm, nor is it a kind of blight that reaches so far up the limb, or so far down the limb, but it is a morbid affection, of muscles acting under a law of election, that limits the progressive wasting to those muscles only that are naturally combined in action, although these muscles lie in different parts of the extremity, and arc supplied by different nerves, as they are also supplied by different arteries. For ex- ample, the muscles of the thumb may be affected by this dis- ease, but the wasting and palsy will not be confined to the short muscles of the ball of the thumb, but will, rather, extend to those long muscles of the thumb which lie upon the forearm; and these wasted muscles are seen lying side by side with those that are plump and powerful. In another case, all the exten- sor muscles of a group, or of a limb, will waste away and lose their power while the flexors will preserve it; and this usually produces a characteristic position of the limb. I am inclined to agree with the early views of Sir Charles Bell in attributing