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

reduced to mere thin cords. Fat, which is always produced in degeneration, or retrogressive metamorphosis of tissues, be- come accumulated, in some of these cases, so as to fill up the place of the consumed or missing muscular fibres. In these cases there is not seen the remarkable wasting that is so appar- ent in others, for the limb may appear nearly, if not quite, as plump as before the attack. But where the sarcolemma, or sheath of muscle fibres, has actually been consumed in the mor- bid process, the sarcous elements become converted into fat and granular matter, and the last ramifications of the motor nerves there distributed become affected, and perhaps perverted, or were perverted at the onset of the malady. In some cases the fat is eliminated probably as fast as formed, and hence the extreme emaciation. It is supposed that this affection does, in some in- stances, extend along the motor nerves to their formation of the anterior root of the spinal nerves, and even atrophy of the spinal cord itself may finally be the consecpience, but never the cause, of the primary affection. If this is so, did not this constitute the true " Tabes Dorsalis " of the more ancient medi- cal writers ? Wasting palsy appears in two forms — the partial and the general. The partial form begins usually in some of the mus- cles of the hands or shoulders, with a tendency to spread to the body, and so threatening life. If it commences in the hand, it is usually in the right hand, and the muscles of the thumb arc first affected. The belly of the thumb gives place to a great hollow space between the first and second metacarpal bones, and next, the lunibricales take on a state of tonus, or rigid contrac- tion, drawing the fingers like claws, while the inlerossei, and also the thenar of the thumb and fingers, and the hypothenar eminences of the palm, are atrophied. Then from the hand the disease extends up the forearm. The extensor muscles of the fingers, situated on the outside of the forearm, are by far the most liable to be affected ; but the flexors are, in some cases, likewise destroyed, or they alone may be affected. In this case the fingers are bent upon themselves, and so retained, much like claws, while they cannot bend upon the hand so as to grasp or hold