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

an atonic or paralytic state of the levator palpebrce superioris, owing to some alteration in the nerve that supplies it; or it may arise, on the other hand, from a spasmodic action of the orbicularis palpebrarum. When this affection occurs from true local palsy, i. e., showing that the third pair of nerves is palsied, then there is usually " squinting" with the ptosis. In this case, we should hear in mind that, usually, electricity in any form is not only useless, but hazardous. In the former, Faradaization of the palpebra superioris muscles and its nerve trunk will cure it. (See Appendix D, Note 3.) When only the motor portion of the fifth pair of nerves is palsied, then there is usually found, moreover, a slight loss of sensibility in the parts of the face supplied by the trifacial, and the motions of the jaws, on the affected side, are impaired. Mastication is therefore difficult on that side, owing to the palsy of the masseter and temporal muscles. This may occur alone ; but more usually there is also loss of sensibility and palsy of the portio dura and the face muscles of that same side. I wish to remark here, that we must be reminded that the portio dura and the portio molis of the seventh pair (the facial and the auditory) are placed so immediately together within the cranium that it is scarcely possible for the one to be there affected without the other. Hence I make it a rule to inquire if there is deafness. This, when wanting, I consider, is a strong diagnostic sign that the lesion is external to the cranium. Artificial Pupil. — M. Tavignot* after enumerating various circumstances which may render the results of the ordinary operation for artificial pupil unsatisfactory, states that he had been for some time thinking of employing the galvanic cautery for this operation, and has actually succeeded in employing it. Its chief advantages, he claims, are, that the.new pupil may by it be established instantly, and without hemorrhage, and that its dimensions and shape can be exactly determined. Being a more simple manoeuvre than the tearing through the iris, it is less likely to be followed by inflammation. Moreover, the aperture can as easily be made in the cases in which false mem- * Moniteur des Hospitaux, 1858, No. 119.