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

sense, and on the other as forming the summit of the apparatus from which motions are directly excited, we cannot but think that they are the parts of the encephalon primarily affected, and that the affection of the hemispheres is rather secondary." Although the loss of consciousness and convulsive movements are usually combined in the epileptic paroxysm, the morbid action radiating upward into the cerebrum, and downward into the motor arrangements, either may therefore occur independently of the other. The loss of consciousness is evi- dently the primary and essential phenomenon in epilepsy ; the disturbance of the intellectual functions is obvioiisly secondary and accidental. The superior gang-lion (pineal) is the focus. When the epileptic paroxysm is the manifestation of a state of abnormal nutrition of the nerves in some part of the brain, which thus shows itself in an undue development of nerve force, it is, according to Dr. Todd, a disturbance of their nervo- electric polar state; and this, when it has attained a certain measure of intensity, manifests itself in the epileptic paroxysm, just as a Leydcn jar, when charged with electricity to a certain state of tension, gets rid of its disturbance by a " disruptive discharge." This state of tension of the brain he regards as resulting "from the accumulation of some material in the blood, which, acting on the brain as a poison, excites this polar state, and this disruptive discharge, and so escapes from the system, leaving the brain sensibly free, until a fresh accumulation excites a new paroxysm." The nature of the morbific matter, or condition of the fluids, which are found capable of being modified, and sometimes cor- rected, by the catalytical workings of galvanism, we cannot yet determine. But the resulting fact is strongly supported by the following opposite classes of facts, which are adduced for anal- ogy, viz.: — 1. The influence of toxic agents in producing artificial epilepsy. 2. The frequent connection of epileptic convulsions, and im- perfect elimination, especially by the kidneys, which, when in a still greater degree, is also attended with coma.