ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 539 



of its limbs could be bent. The attack over, it regained its senses, 

 but the least impression, at all vivid, sufficed to bring on a new attack. 

 Ascending currents were first applied to the spinal marrow. The child 

 was at once seized with a violent crisis. Descending currents were 

 then used for fifteen days in succession, after which the little patient 

 regained health. A young girl aged seventeen, in an hysteric condition, 

 presented very strange symptoms in the larynx, the velum of the pal- 

 ate, and the facial muscles, among others a sort of barking, followed 

 by vehement sniffing and horrible grimaces. By placing the positive 

 pole in the patient's mouth against the arch of the palate, and the 

 negative pole on the nape of the neck, all these morbid affections were 

 completely subdued. The disposition of the poles in the reverse or- 

 der, on the other hand, aggravated them. After sixteen repetitions of 

 electric treatment, the young girl was almost completely cured, retain- 

 ing only a muscular twitch of little importance, compai'ed with her 

 former ailments. Several cases of tetanus also were treated with com- 

 plete success by similar methods. This terrible disease, the most fear- 

 ful of all surgical complications, is due to an acute inflammation of 

 the spinal marrow. It is followed by such an alteration of the motor 

 nerves, that all the muscles of the body experience general contrac- 

 tion, and a painful rigidity that by degrees attacks the vitally essen- 

 tial organs. When an attack of this kind reaches the muscles of the 

 chest and heart, death occurs, through asphyxia. In such a case the 

 continuous current restores the motor nerves to their normal state. 

 Two other chronic diseases of the spine, the first being particularly 

 serious progressive muscular atrophy and locomotive ataxy often 

 yield to the rational use of electricity, or at least are checked in their 

 progress, the natural issue of which is death. It is worth remarking 

 that these two disorders were discovered and described by Duchenne, 

 in the course of his researches into this method of treatment. Elec- 

 tricity served his purposes of diagnosis, as it serves in physiology as 

 a means of study, taking in that science the place of a kind of reac- 

 tive agent, and revealing functional differences that no other process 

 could have detected. To it alone, according to the way in which it 

 affects a nerve or a muscle, belongs the power, under certain circum- 

 stances, of determining the nature and even the degree of alteration 

 in nervous or muscular elements. 



Aldini said that galvanism afforded a powerful means of restoring 

 vitality when suspended by any cause. Several physicians, at the be- 

 ginning of this century, restored life by this means to dogs, after they 

 had undergone all the processes of drowning, and seemed dead. 

 Halle and Sue proposed at that period to place galvanic machines in 

 the different quarters of Paris, particularly near the Seine. This wise 

 and useful plan has not yet been put into execution, though all experi- 

 ments made since that time confirm the proof of the efficiency of elec- 

 tricity in cases of asphyxia and syncope, produced either by water or 



