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

be, as far as possible, avoided. The morbid condition of the blood and of the organs must be remedied. A low posture and deep sleep must be carefully shunned. The neck must be cau- tiously guarded against a tight collar, &c. This is all perfectly sound in therapeutics, however questionable may be some points in his theory. (See pp. 222, 264.) M. Plourens has shown that while superficial sections of the corpora quadrigemina produce no other effect than the impair- ment or loss of vision, deep sections produce general convulsions. " I have been desirous," he says, " of ascertaining whether the parts within the cranium, if excited by the stimulus of gal- vanism, would give rise to any phenomena similar or analogous to those produced by galvanic stimulation of the spinal cord. Accordingly, I determined to subject them severally to the action of the magneto-electric rotation machine — a most con- venient instrument for physiological experiments." The trials were performed on rabbits. " I took the spinal cord first; here we had the well-known tetanic effects to which I have already frequently referred. Next I tried the medulla oblongata: the effects of the stimulation of this organ were much the same as those produced by irritating the cord. I then tried the corpora quadrigemina and the mesocephale. Having passed fine brad-awls into the cranium, in such a direction as I had previously satisfied myself would lead to this organ, I sub- jected it to the influence of the machine; general convulsions were produced, of a character essentially different from those which resulted from stimulating the spinal cord, or the medxdla oblongata. They were combined movements of alternate con- traction and relaxation; flexion and extension affecting the muscles of all the limbs, of the trunk, and of the eyes, which latter rolled about just as in epilepsy. "On inserting the awls into the hemispheric lobes of the brain, still different effects were produced by the application of the electric machine. I could observe nothing like true con- vulsions ; but slight convulsive twitchings of the muscles of the face took place, which were no more than what would be caused by the stiniujus of galvanism acting upon the nerves of the face. 50