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

to the viscus, and most active for the dissolving process. Cal- culi of the oxalate of lime are the only ones that have resisted this action, and these, if they contain phosphates also, are slaked down, but if they contain the urates, or uric acid, then they are slow to yield. Notwithstanding all this, but few fair attempts have actually been made to dissolve renal calculi from the bladder in the living human patient. The results, on the whole, so far, I con- ceive, are negative; although it has been claimed by Dr. Mel- ichcr and others, as we are aware, to have been successfully ac- complished. The calculi are probably only affected secondarily, even by the improved process, while the current is separating the nitric acid, and driving it to one pole, and the potash is hurried off to the other. Nor can the bladder play the part of an electric bath tub for such chemical power, without receiving some doubtful effects. Dr. Simon has recently treated some cases of incontinence of urine in children by means of galvanism, the current being conveyed by the aid of a partly insulated catheter into the bladder. The residt in two or three marked cases, he says, has been quite successful. The cases selected for this treatment, of course, are those of true incontinence of urine from atony, and not from irritable bladder, or from kidney or other urinary diseases. A clear and practical distinction can and should always be made between the paralysis of the neck of the bladder and that form of paralysis that affects the body of that organ ; the first form being attended with incontinence of urine, the second with retention of urine. But we hardly believe that this important difference is clearly attended to by very many practitioners. According to Dr. Gross, of Philadelphia, and Professor of Surgery in the University of Louisville, irritability and neu- ralgia of the bladder have many points in common; indeed, few authors devote a distinct chapter to the latter affection. Neuralgic affections of this viscus, in our country at least, cer- tainly seem very common ; and according to Professor Gross, we may usually find neuralgic symptoms at the same time in other