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

running current from the pit of the stomach and along the re- gion of the diaphragm, from the stermim and the pectoral muscles, to the posterior cervical ganglion, for two or three min- utes, and then down the spine with a stronger current, for five or six minutes more at each seance. (See Appendix D,l ;P, 2.) Chorea — " St. Vitus's Dance." The characteristics of this odd affection are, mainly, irregular and involuntary motions of one or more limbs, and also often of the face and trunk. These twitchings or spasms do not continue during sleep. This disease more frequently occurs from fright, before puberty, but not always or necessarily so, and is believed to be connected with enfeebled nerves, and some torpor of the developing system. Its duration may be long as a mere nerve habit, or it may lead on to deformity and idiocy ; but it is rarely fatal. Active purgatives once or twice a week, as by oleum tig- lit, and the persevering use of iron, or of arsenic, as in Fowler's solution, will often cure it. But the primary and direct or down-running current of some ten elements of Daniell's batte- ries, applied every other day to the spine, with all the precau- tions and method as laid down for the treatment of neuralgia, will materially aid in arousing and equalizing the nervous ener- gy of the system. Particularly is this true where the chorea oc- curs in a constitution tainted witli rheumatism. But as " St. Vitus's dance " is now and then attended with a heart affected, of which it may be a symptom, it is always well to examine that organ before commencing the use of electro-therapeutics for the cure of this nervous affection. My own clinical experience enables me to say, moreover, that where the heart is not seriously diseased, and very often, where it is greatly disturbed in function, I have scarcely ever failed to cure chorea, even when of ten to twenty years' standing, by means of the direct primary currents of galvanism, run from the nucha to the coccyx, in connection with the cold douche to the spine, daily, and continued for a length of time. Dr. Addison, the senior physician to Guy's Hospital, says, 51