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

most part, of the former or eccentric kind, and are curable; however, for many reasons, they are difficult of cure. " The chain of events in epilepsy and other convulsive dis- eases may be pursued link by link. The eccentric causes acton the eisodic nerves, thence on the spinal centre, (medulla oblon- gata,) and thence along exodic nerves on the various muscles. Of these, few, many, or all, may be affected, and the malady may be the very slightest, or the very direst. Amongst the rest — I was about to say, chief among the rest—arc the muscles of the neck and larynx. By the contraction of the muscles of the neck, the veins of the neck are compressed, as I have already noticed, and the extra-cranial and intra-cranial tissues and or- gans become affected with venous congestion and all its conse- quences. Nay, I am disposed to say, that in every case in which there is such venous congestion of the neck, face, eyes, brain, it arises from this trochelismus, either latent or evident. By the contraction of the muscles of the larynx in laryngismus, — this vital inlet to the respiration, combined, as it usually is, with breath struggles, — I believe is the direst form of epilepsy, with its direst effects, as coma, mania, dementia, &c, to be produced. I do not say that these effects may not arise in cases in which there is only trachelismus, and no laryngismus ; but I am con- vinced that they are chiefly the effects of laryngismus, for they have subsided in cases in which the laryngismus has been dis- armed by tracheotomy. "And now you perceive in what sense epilepsy maybe regarded as a cerebral disease. Cerebral in its very origin, it can never be. It may be intra-cranial in its origin, because within the cranium there are many tissues, as the membranes from which eisodic nerves arise — many such nerves, as the fifth pair espe- cially, pursuing there a part of their course ; and the medulla oblongata also — all of which may be excited by the presence of an exostosis, a tumor, or a variety of causes. But I repeat, that no disease of the cerebral centre, limited to that centre in itself, and its effects, does or can produce epilepsy. " Exciting causes of epilepsy are, then, first—the spinal system, the neck — the encephalon. Such are the order or links of this