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

action through the nerves. He mentions three methods by which this is performed — the application of cold, mechanical irritation with the hand, and the use of galvanism. With regard to the latter, he says, " We find that in patients per- fectly paraplegic, with entire loss of reflex uterine power, yet the uterus has been excited to contractions sufficient to expel the foetus by means of electro-magnetism. Dr. Radford, of Manchester, applied this power to the arrest of uterine hemor- rhage. One pole of a galvanic trough being placed within the os uteri, and'the other applied over and above the fundus, it has been found that on making and breaking the galvanic circle every half minute, powerful uterine contractions occur. It is said that the uterus can be made to contract by this agency when it will obey no other stimulus whatever, and I have little doubt that this is correct. It accords with all we know of the influence of electricity upon the muscular fibre. The contrac- tion of the uterus from galvanism is probably the most simple mode in which we can act directly upon the irritability of the muscular fibre, and the contained ramifying nerve fibrils, with- out necessarily complicating it with reflex action, (if this is so in fact.) The reflex actions excited by passing galvanic cur- rents through muscles alone, we know, are very slight, if they occur at all. This is proved by a great number of experiments. There is, however, one important disturbing agency in the application of galvanic currents, which must be taken into account. The application of this remedy, and the painful sen- sations it excites, disturb the emotions considerably. In some such cases, the emotional excitement increases the influence of galvanism ; in others, it weakens or suspends its sensible action altogether. This is probably one of the reasons why, in some cases, galvanism produces little or no contractile effects." Prolapsus Uteri. — In the Edinburgh Medical Journal for 1856 we find the following editorial on the Displacements of the Womb : " It is our impression, that there is not a sufficient regard to the recognizance of the uterus as a ' floating body,' or rather as a body whose mechanical conditions of equilibrium make its support more nearly analogous to that, than to any