84 LOCALIZED ELECTRIZATION. 



long study of faradization to attain to this degree of certainty ; 

 which fortunately does not seem to be absolutely necessary for 

 the application of tlie method to therapeutics. 



It IS perfectly certain, as I have shown, that a rheophore suffi- 

 ciently moist, and in perfect contact with the skin, produces no 

 sensations but such as are purely muscular ; unless it chance to 

 be placed over the track of a cutaneous nerve. But it must 

 not be forgotten that, at the moment of application to the skin, 

 and before the perfect contact is established, a cutaneous blends 

 Avith the muscular sensation. It follows that muscuUir faradization, 

 especially with rapid intermissions, is much more painful at the 

 moment when the rheophore is placed in contact with the skin. 

 It is necessary to proceed as follows, in order to avoid exciting the 

 mixed and very painful sensation. Before placing the rheophores 

 upon the skin, they should be brought into contact with each 

 other, so as to neutralize the current. When they are properly 

 placed upon the skin, and lightly pressed down, they may be 

 carefully separated a little, so that the electric recomposition may 

 take place in the muscle that is to be excited. I adoj)t also 

 another and equally simple method, which consists in not allowing 

 the current to pass until the rheophores are placed in position 

 over the muscle. 



C. — The joints of selection in the practice of localized muscular 



faradization. 



The general precepts set forth in this paragraph are perfectly 

 clear. The chief of them may be summed up in the following 

 manner. When the electric excitation is localized in a nervous 

 trunk, or in the muscular nerves proceeding from it, we have 

 indirect muscular faradization ; but wlien the excitation is applied 

 to the muscular tissue, we have direct muscular faradization. 



{a). But, if the precept is clear, the execution is not always easy ; 

 especially when it is desired to produce contraction of individual 

 muscules or fasciculi for some electro-physiological purj)ose. 



The nervous trunks of the limbs are, for the most part, easily 

 accessible to rheophores, since they nearly all present some point 

 of their continuity immediately beneath the skin. It is not the 

 same with the nerves of tlie muscles. Some of them, indeed, may 

 be assailed at points remote from the muscles to which they are 

 distributed (as, for example, the phrenic nerve, in front of the 

 scalenus anticus ; the nerve of the serratus raagnus, above the 

 clavicle), and near their points of emergence. With regard to 

 other muscular nerves (those of the limbs), we can neither reach 

 their points of emergence or of immersion without acting upon a 



