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

CHAPTER X. ELECTRICITY IN SURGERY. At the University College Hospital,* Dr. Marshall has made some very interesting trials as to the efficacy of the electric cur- rent in benumbing parts ready to be submitted to surgical opera- tions by the knife, the idea involved in these trials being of course derived from its conditional advantages in " tooth- drawing." As many as nine operations, requiring incisions of various kinds, have been thus performed. Excepting where the current employed seemed to be too strong, the pain of the in- cisions appeared, on the whole, to have been so modified as to be somewhat more endurable than is usually the case. In one instance — that of the adipose Junior—the cuts were very slightly felt. There was no instance, however, of complete anaesthesia; and it would be premature to flatter ourselves that, in regard to the effects of electricity in cutting' operations, any thing more than a modifying influence had yet been certainly obtained. Electricity, in any fair sense, is no way paralyzing. Dr. John Snow concludes that the sensibility of the body may be " couched," suspended, or destroyed in two ways. First, it may be accomplished by the direct effect of some temporarily benumbing agent on the extremities of the nerve ramifications of the part. Secondly, by the effect of the agent on the centres of intelligence; i. e., by the destruction of consciousness. This may be illustrated by contrasting the probably different effects of amylene and ether. The former acts mainly on the periph- ery twigs of the sensory nerves. Ether, on the other hand, suspends sensibility in proportion as it destroys consciousness for the time. But electric currents cannot produce complete anasthesia at our will, either uniformly or safely. * Lancet, Sept. 18, 1858, p. 297.