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

the membrana tympani in vain, I have resorted to this still more direct application of the galvanic current to the very parts affected. A sound, insulated except at its small button-like tip, is carried through the nasal fossa, backward, until it strikes and is supposed to be at or near the opening of the Eustachian tube, (not necessarily entering the duct,) while the other electrode is armed with an insulated acu-puncture needle, whose point for one sixteenth of an inch is naked gold, which is to be implanted into the membrane of the tympanum. Of the Daniell's improved battery I employ from two to five, or even ten or twenty elements, (cups,) by making fixed contact, say with the nasal electrode, and then touching for a second or two the head of the acu-punc- ture (needle) that is in the ear, changing the direction of the cur- rent from second to second, or every five or ten seconds at most. Sometimes flashes of light are seen, and there is almost always experienced a metallic taste, while the shock is sensible, and not very agreeable. Patients that are impressible, sensitive, or irri- table, should receive but one or two such shocks, and from only three to five cups ; while others will bear five, ten, or even the twenty. It can be repeated every three days, or once a week, according to the effect produced. In well-marked cases of deaf- ness, where the milder method was insufficient, this has awakened an entire cure, that, so far, proves to be permanent, (p. 233.) Case of extreme deafness, and disease of both ears treated by electricity and cured. — Edward A. Goddard, of New York, aged twenty, was brought to me to receive treatment for almost total deafness; had suffered from disease of his ears nearly all his life. At three years of age he had scarlet fever; did not leave his bed for nearly a year; has had severe sickness since ; is now decidedly a fine-looking young man, with fair skin and hair, but is evidently scrofulous ; has had tumors cut from his neck, which were probably enlarged lymphatics ; has been under the care of the most eminent men in our large cities, for this deafness, which was not a whit better, but grew worse, and was now almost a to- tal deafness in both ears. During all these years there has been more or less discharge from the ears, and of late this appears to have been increased by the treatment from professed aurists. Such notes I gather from my case book.