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

that, he says, with varied success. On the whole, he finds that fine platinum needles for electrodes, plunged deeply into the mass of the tumor, and so leading the current through it, work the best of all. He quotes a large list of cases and ex- periences in this line, and his final opinion is, " that, for these cases, the current is both chemical and exciting to the circula- tion and absorbents, also producing a capability and tendency to contractility in the vessels and tissues about the affected parts, that not a little,aid to wither the tumor." Cancer and Tubercle. Neither of these affections is directly eliminated from the system by electricity or any other medication. In the former disease, however, induction (secondary) currents have some- times afforded most charming temporary relief. In the latter, electric currents can be so employed as to arouse some more abiding vital action in the weakened muscles of the chest, so as to make respiration deeper and stronger, and thus vitalizing the lungs and other portions of the body, without stimulating the tubercular mass very much. I have not a question that tubercle may be seized upon by the forces of nature through the absorb- ents, and thus often rendered latent, or perhaps in some in- stances removed. I have seen cases recover under the electric treatment, and endure labor and exposure afterwards, who were pronounced by able physicians to be marked with tubercular deposits. (If resorted to, see Appendix P, G.) Tubercle and cancer, it is to be borne in mind, are very different diseases ; the former possesses no fibrous stroma, but is simply infiltrated among the elements of various organs, the vascularity of which it tends to destroy. A cancerous tumor increases by actual growth, cell by cell; but tubercle does not, for it is rather deposited, accumulated, or left; the cancer is vascular, the tubercle is not; in the former, cells are organized which have the power of redevelopment; in the latter, reproductive cells, or self-propagating processes, are never produced. In cancers, the morbid matter circulating in the blood — whatever