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

These experiments, which I have repeated several times, and each time with like results, seem to denote that convulsions are modified according to the part of the cerebro-spinal axis which is primarily excited : if it be the spinal cord, they arc tetanic; if the medulla oblongata, they are tetanic likewise, other parts being involved; if the corpora quadrigemina and the meso- cephale, they arc epileptic ; if the cerebral hemispheres, you scarcely have any convulsions, but slight twitchings of the muscles." Dr. Weber, in his excellent essay on muscular motion, pub* lished in Wagner's " Handwortcrbuch" of physiology, refers briefly to similar experiments performed by himself on the brain of a frog, and leading to the same results; and he draws this conclusion, that " the tonic convulsions, as trismus and tetanus, arc the effect of disturbance of the functions of the spinal cord; whilst the clonic convulsions are due to derangement of the functions of certain parts of the brain." (See p. 222.) Thus, then, I come to this conclusion, respecting the parts of the nervous system which are directly concerned in the produc- tion of the epileptic paroxysm. The part of the cnccphalon primarily disturbed is the hemispheric lobes; if the disturbance do not go beyond a certain point, the phenomena are limited to simple loss of consciousness and impaired intellectual action, witli more or less sopor. But if the disturbance be consider- able, then the tubercula quadrigemina and mesor.ephale become involved, and epileptic convulsions are produced. If the dis- turbance of this centre be very great, the medulla oblongata and the medulla spinalis become much excited, and the convulsions are complicated with a good deal of the tetanic character. House painters or others exposed to the contamination of lead are apt after some time to fall into a fearfully cachectic state, of which a principal feature is the deficiency in red particles of blood. I have seen several persons, under these circumstances, become epileptic shortly before death, and, in fact, die in con- sequence of the violence of the epileptic paroxysms. All these are striking instances to show how blood, when deficient in quantity, deficient in one of its most important staminal prin-