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

CHAPTER IX. MIDWIFERY — ABDOMINAL VISCERA — SECRETIONS. The uterus may be contracted by a given application of elec- tricity, whether gravid or not. Clinical experience, of late, has fairly demonstrated that by the employment of the Faradaic or Gal- vanic currents, the uterus in the living woman contracts in toto. Recently, Dr. McKcnzie, of England, exposed to view, as is well known, the gravid uterus of a pregnant bitch, and then, by means of the electro-magnetic currents applied in a certain way, he perceived, after a given time, a slow vermicular-like movement of the muscular coats of the uterus, which resulted in general con- tractions. This was also perceptible to the touch of the fingers. The phenomenon was far more marked when the positive pole was applied to the spine, while the negative pole was being applied to the cervix uteri, than when both electrodes were directed to the substance of the uterus. He ascertained that an electric current directed perpendicularly, i. e., in a direction through the uterus from the fundus to the cervix, promotes powerful and general uterine contractions; whereas currents passed trans- versely through the organ excite but partial contractions, and those limited to the fibres embraced between the electrodes. Dr. McKenzie insists that it is necessary to apply the positive pole to the nape of the neck, while the negative is at the cervix uteri, if we wish to act surely and energetically through the great sympathetic, upon the contractile fibre-cells of the involuntary muscular substance of the uterus, in any great emergency. Herder, Stein, and Kilian in Germany, Radford and Barnes in England, and Bertholon in France, have employed, and still rec- ommend the employment, of electricity by induction, as aid to midwifery practice ; especially so in cases of tedious labor; in