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

tissue does not depend alone upon enlargement of the individ- ual fibres of the muscles. He has also discovered that starva- tion diminishes the number of the fibres, and also notably lessens their individual size. This answers the old query whether during growth, and the hypertrophy caused by healthy exercise, the muscular fibres of animal life increase in number, or merely in size. M. Bccquerel and M. Valerius are of the opinion that true and still active wasting palsy are not proper cases for the trial of electro-therapeutics. M. Duchenne, however, says that as long as the muscles show the least signs of electric response, even if only by the smallest fibril wave or contraction, and up to the period when fatty transformation is about to set in, he hopes for, and attempts by the aid of electricity the restoration; and it does seem to me, that here he has succeeded wonderfully, not only for amelioration, but for actual cure. But I find this end is easier attained where the atrophy is local, and where it is the effect of too close application, or rather from a work of unremitting sameness, that has overworked and exhausted a certain class or classes of muscles. When the case is sponta- neous and general, and that without special cause, then I reckon there is far less hope, if any at all. We may, moreover, have presented to us for treatment a local palsy, attended with atrophy, first, from inaction, or, second, from over-action. The former requires gentle and often-repeated exercise, with electric treatments ; while the latter requires rest, automatic movements, and champooing, and this aided with electric treatments, to cure. These can usually be successfully treated, but are apt to remain feeble, and if overworked again they are very liable to relapse; hence the actual necessity of cautioning the patient or his friends. Dr. Duchenne, who certainly has had very great experience with this class of cases, is disposed to believe that a new forma- tion of conduction, or capability of conduction, here takes place in the nerves, much the same as is known to occur under favor- able circumstances, through a cicatrix, so as to restore one way sentient nerve influence, and the other way motor nerve influ-