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

parts of the patient. Sometimes the pain is located in one spot; at other times it extends to other organs. There is in these cases a frequent desire to pass water, and the urine is thrown out in jets, and in very small quantity, while a distress- ing soreness is left behind in the urinary passages. A system- atic course of laxatives, together with morphia, or belladonna, or conium, seems usually beneficial; but the electric positive pole, directed precisely to the part affected, while the other pole is at a distance, and a gentle current is thus circulated for five or ten minutes, will all the better quell the neuralgia at this site. (See Appendix E, Notes 1, 3, and G, Note 4.) But where the bladder is rather affected with atony or paral- ysis, instead of irritability or neuralgia, then the electric current must circulate in the opposite direction mainly, that is, to sud- denly reverse the current, and make it for one minute this way, or direct, and but a quarter of a minute reversed. (Seep.338.J In managing the various forms of paralysis of the urinary bladder, I cannot but urge the precaution laid down by Dr. Gross; and that is, where the accumulation of water is large, or has long existed, to never evacuate the whole of the urine at once, as he says he lias seen several patients die from the severe depression induced by the sudden removal of the accumulation from such an over-distended bladder. In all such instances, he advises to allow a small quantity of urine to remain, and to apply a bandage to the abdomen, as after tapping or parturition; to give castor oil and turpentine cathartics, together with strych- nine and tinct. cantharides. Incontinence of urine may often be observed in patients who have had rheumatism. In most of these cases, the affection has been referred to some deviation in the spinal marrow. But Dr. Froriel denies this,— as any affection of the lower portion of the cord, which would cause paralysis of the bladder, would at the same time produce some paralytic symptoms on the voluntary muscles of the lower extremities. It is therefore referable rather to a local affection of the bladder itself—to some deranged state of its nerves, of its muscular fibre, or of both. Taking this view of the malady, he resolved to try the effects of the local