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

vessels. Instead of this being always the fact, probably many of these symptoms arise from caiises altogether different, which, judging by the effects produced, bear a close resemblance to poisons. For example, there is a common idea " that in acute cerebral affections dilatation of the pupil only attends the state of coma or insensibility, and that, on the other hand, contraction of the pupil is always associated with a morbidly ' active ' state of the sensorium." This opinion, he thinks, is shown to be erroneous by his attentive observations of the pupil in a suc- cession of fever cases ; and also by the fact that poisoning with a certain species of mushroom produces contracted pupils during the stage of perfect insensibility, but widely-dilated pupils, during the fury of delirium. The coma with contracted pupils, that may be caused by opium, he thinks can always be relieved by belladonna, if timely given; that the sub-cutaneous injection of morphia will cure one class of neuralgic seated pains, while it is only atrophia thus iised that will reach another class, i. e., where morphia fails; that in case either should act unex- pectedly, too profoundly, the other will neutralize it. But I must here add as a precaution, not to venture too much in trying the sub-cutaneous injection of so powerful an agent as atrophia. The following case of laudanum poisoning-, treated with elec- tricity by Dr. Russel, house physician of King's College Hospital, shows the value of this agent as an excitor of the great nervous centres: Mary Ann H., aged two months, had taken, through a mistake, some twelve drops of laudanum. The medicine had produced deep sleep, and in the space of two hours, convulsive movements of the extremities. "When admitted, the infant was quite insensible and as motionless. The surface was cold and exsanguine; the impulse of the heart could not be made out. Breathing was very difficult, and was performed with intervals of half a minute, at least, between the inspirations. The pupils were very small, and she had lost the power of swallowing. The usual remedies had been employed witlumt success, and in a quarter of an hour more, the child appeared to be quite dead; but while being removed, she was heard to rattle in her throat,