BY ELECTRICITY. 35 



rupted current should be resorted to ; the battery should be 

 pretty powerful, and care should be taken that the electricity 

 should be confined as much as possible to the nerves, and that 

 it be sent along them in the direction of their ramifications. 

 The chief object in asphyxia being to restore the circulation of 

 the blood and the respiratory movements, the galvanic influence 

 should be principally directed to the organs upon whose actions 

 these depend ; and towards accomplishing this, no plan appears 

 more likely to be efficacious than that which has been recom- 

 mended by Dr. Ure, and which we have described at full in the 

 fifth chapter. We allude to the transmission of the current 

 along the par vagum. 



In asphyxia produced by concussion of the brain, there are 

 strong reasons for believing that galvanism would prove ex- 

 tremely successful. This plan of treatment was first proposed by 

 M. Goudret,* who had his attention particularly called to the 

 subject by witnessing the death of an individual in the Ukraine, 

 who had fallen on his head from his horse, notwithstanding the 

 sedulous application of all the analeptic means familiar to the 

 physician. Upon his return to Paris, he undertook an experi- 

 mental enquiry into the efficacy of the pile in such cases, and 

 found his expectations more than verified. In his first experi- 

 ment, a rabbit which had been to all appearance killed by a 

 few violent blows inflicted with the back of the hand, was per- 

 fectly recovered by a succession of shocks continued for half an 

 hour, transmitted between the eyes, nose, and meatus auditorius 

 externus on the one hand, and different parts of the spine of the 

 animal on the other. In a second trial, made with a stronger 

 rabbit, the method just described did not produce the desired 

 effect within the space of thirty minutes; but upon removing 

 the cuticle from the spine by caustic ammonia, and then applying 

 the pile as before, at the end of the second half-hour the animal 

 was restored to life, though it continued paralytic for a few days 

 in its hinder extremities. Similar experiments have been per- 

 formed by Dr. Apjohn with like success. 



* Journal de Physiologic, vol. iv. p. 332. 



