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

Wc can scarcely ever see a case of acute chorea, therefore, without at least carefully examining for a rheumatic history. If there be no fibrile state present, but if the urine is found highly loaded with lithates, though not of itself sufficient, yet it is highly presumptive of the co-existence of rheumatic discrasia, and perhaps of acute pericarditis also. A great number of examples might be delineated here, to show the success of a weak primary or a very gentle secondary current, directed for five minutes per day down the whole spine. Dr. Dupee, of this city, sent a little boy, Charles C, under a dozen years old, to me, for this treatment, whose heart was not only affected, but together with chorea, the saliva drooled from his mouth, his speech was nearly gone, and his right arm was quite paralyzed. I gave him daily sittings for the first month, (Sundays excepted,) then two sittings per week, for the next month, which quite com- pleted the cure. This fine little fellow is now well and at school. According to M. Becquerel, too, this affection is susceptible of receiving a happy and permanent influence, if we employ the primary current of some ten Daniell's compound battery, gently applied and directed down the whole length of the spine, by placing one electrode at the base of the occiput, while the other is at or under the coccyx; or we may employ negative sparks, drawing them from along the spine. The former, he says, where the chorea is not still the consequence of worms, nor yet of some existing organic disease, as of the heart, &c, has a most rapid catalytical in-working, much as in cases of rheumatism, and resulting in most complete success, alike in cases of local, gen- eral, and hemiplegic forms. It ought to be mentioned here, likewise, that where " stutter- ing " occurs in childhood, or if the patient is still in youth, elec- tricity can restore poiver to the muscles and dominion to the will, which, together with muscle drill and muscle education to break up the old and bad habits of the muscles, will constitute a radi- cal cure. For these cases we can employ the negative sparks of static electricity directed daily to the muscles under the chin and about the throat, or the Faradaic currents run from the posterior cervical ganglia to the throat and roots of the tongue,