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

formed, but performed too tardily, the patient, however saved from laryngeal asphyxia, dies, after all, of bronchial asphyxia. And there are other branches of the pneumogastric nerve that suffer—the cardiac and the gastric. The heart and the stomach participate in the partial or complete paralysis of the general pneumogastric. If the physician observes palpitation as a symp- tom in some cases of epilepsy, this is explained by being aware of the excitement of the cardiac branches of the pneumogastric. In other cases there are backups, eructation, acidity of the stomach, the effects of excitement of the gastric branches of this composite nerve, viz., the pneumogastric. Now, as in these cases there is a morbid action in the heart and stomach, so in deep epileptic coma, there is failure of the powers of these organs. " The pneumogastric nerve is more involved in epilepsy than it is in other convulsive diseases. For mark, all the phenomena just described as observed in the former, arc again met with in the latter, only, of course, modified by the exciting causes and the conditions of age and sex. " In infants there is the same or similar action of the muscles of the neck, and of the larynx, and of respiration. In puerpe- ral convulsions the symptoms are identically those of epilepsy. There is a form of epilepsy which I have not yet here noticed. It is the epilepsy syncopalis. The patient, instead of turning purple, (with congested face,) turns pale and ghastly. Some- times this syncope is fatal I So it is in the laryngismus stridulus of infants. The little patient not unfrequently dies suddenly — too suddenly to be the effect of asphyxia. Such a case is cardiac syncopal. " The laryngismus stridulus is often excited by enteric irritation. This is also frequently attended by fret of the bladder. Epilepsy is induced by enteric and by uterine irritation, and is sometimes attended by involuntary evacuations of the bladder, rectum, &c. The urine is frequently found morbid in both cases." Such are the original views of the great Marshall Hall. On the treatment of all convulsive diseases, and epilepsy in particular, Dr. Hall advises that excitement and irritants must