BY ELECTRICITY. 31 



lished several successful cases of the use of Electricity in Amau- 

 rosis.* He never saw the least benefit when the disease had 

 existed for two years. Voltaic Electricity has also heen employed 

 in this disease, when other remedies have failed ; and, indeed, it 

 will be obvious that this modification of electricity may be more 

 readily transmitted through the ball of the eye, so as to traverse 

 the retina, or be confined to those twigs of the first branch of 

 the fifth pair of nerves which ramify on the forehead above the 

 orbit, and upon the state of which alone, Majendie has shown 

 that gutta serena often depends. It must, however, be employed 

 with great caution, as its mechanical effect is calculated in 

 many cases, to aggravate the malady. 



Aphonia. (Loss of Voice,) In some few cases, the application 

 of Voltaic Electricity in this affection has been attended with 

 success. The circuit may be completed through the organs chiefly 

 concerned in the production of the voice, by placing a shilling 

 upon the tongue, and touching it with the negative wire of a 

 battery, whose other pole is alternately brought in connection 

 with and separated from different parts of the external larynx 

 a method successfully employed by Mr. Miles Partington, in a 

 case detailed in the London Medical and Physical Journal. 



2. To STIMULATE THE MOTOR NERVES. 



The first disease of this class of affections which we shall no- 

 tice is Paralysis; and there can be no doubt that electricity has 

 been of considerable service in many cases of this kind. But it 

 is necessary, before attempting the application of electricity, for 

 the practitioner to assure himself of the real nature of the disease. 

 If it depend on some lesion of the cerebro -spinal centre, relief 

 by electricity is not to be expected. It is only calculated to be 

 of service when the malady arises from some functional disorder 

 of the nerves. In cases where the use of the parts was originally 

 paralysed by effusion in some portion of the cerebro-spinal centre, 

 and there is reason to believe that the blood effused has been 

 absorbed, and that the paralysis remains from desuetude only, 



* Medical Observ. and Inq. vol. v. p. I. 



