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

feelings ; but that those latter are of comparatively short duration." This state of the bowels is vastly more common in the female than in the male sex, though by no means uncommon in the latter; and in the former it is very often accompanied by dis- menorrhcea, and occasionally, too, by the membranous form of that affection. The primary, and I believe indispensable point for cure is, first, a total, or almost " total abstinence from purgative med- icines." With this view, I was till lately in the habit of reliev- ing the bowels every third or fourth day by enemata of simple warm water, or with the addition of a table spoonful of salt and molasses, or oil, and perhaps every ten or twelve days a dose of laxative by the mouth. These means, simple though they be, actually do mischief; and therefore it was desirable to discover a mode of effecting the object, without the disadvantage of its being, at the same time, an irritant and debilitant. External counter-irritation is the second point; and this, from shampooing, or a mustard poultice, or both, every night or second night, gives considerable but only temporary relief, which, how- ever, was always most grateful to the patient. But in very many instances it failed utterly, and where it did benefit the relief was usually transient. " Circumstances which I need not at present detail," says Dr. Cummings, " led me to surmise that electro-galvanism would accomplish both those indications of treatment, viz., counter- irritative and laxative, without the disadvantages to the patient with which other means are chargeable. The results of its use, in a considerable number of cases of this intestine dis- ease, warrant me, I think, in affirming that electricity is com- petent of itself to the cure of almost every such case, and that if aided by a unique internal medicine, which I shall refer to presently, it will cure both certainly and speedily. " In the first place I find it acts as an aperient, seemingly by its action on the intestinal muscular coat, as well as the secre- tions of the mucous membrane of the bowels. In every case in which I have used it, this has been the effect; and if it had no