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

Jones says, " Any organ that is used must be repaired ; and the substance that has been used must be removed. Take the muscles, for example : the muscles consist of water, salts, non- nitrogenous fat, and a highly compound arrangement of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur, and phosphorus. Carbonic acid, ammonia, water, sulphates, and phosphates are the last products of muscular action, and of the action of oxygen on the muscle. The intervening products, probably, are innumerable, as kreatine, kreatinine, uric acid, urea, and choleic acid. Some of the products are thrown out of the body by the lungs, others by the kidneys. If the removal of some of these products, which usually go by the lungs, is stopped, the circulation through the lungs ceases in two minutes! the heart and brain are stopped, and from the mechanical stoppage in the lungs death ensues. If the removal of these products by the kidneys is stopped, in two days the patient is poisoned ; the nerves and muscles are affected by the poison, and chemical death ensues. " If beef steaks (the muscles of an ox) are given to one who has taken strong exercise, and is in perfect health, they are dis- solved, pass into the blood, and their chief use is to repair the human muscles and nerves, not to form excrements from the bowels, uric acid, and urea, and the constituents of the urine. The waste of the muscles and other organs passes off in the urine, whilst the food nourishes the wasting organs. Such are the clearest ideas I can give of the urine in relation to the system and the food, and theoretically I consider this as the true healthy relation; and perhaps in a state of full bodily labor, (i. e., when enough food, and no more food than enough, is taken,) this may be the only relation ; but provision has been made for too little labor and for too much food. If too much food is constantly taken, and too little exercise, plethora, hem- orrhage, and humors must take place, if some escape for this excess be not provided. We know that the phosphates, sul- phates, and urates are generally increased in the urine after food has been taken. If more food is taken than is required for the absolute wants of the system, then the excess is thrown out by the same organs that remove the waste of muscles and 58