THEEAPEUTIC VALUE OF ELECTRO-PUNCTURE. 117 



experiments. In wounded persons I have inserted needles in 

 denuded portions of muscle, and also at points where the muscles 

 were still covered by unbroken skin ; and I have applied electricity 

 in both situations. In the former, I produced the dull sensation 

 proper to muscular excitation ; such as is commonly produced by 

 placing moist rheophores upon the healthy skin. In the latter 

 the sensation was very acute ; and resembled that which follows 

 electro-cutaneous excitation, as in faradization by metallic threads 

 upon a dry skin. 



We cannot produce at pleasure, by means of electro-puncture, 

 the contraction of a muscle or of a single fasciculus, or of a few 

 fibres only. Indeed, although I have been careful to place the 

 needles at a distance from nerve-trunks, the muscular con- 

 tractions observed in my experiments have nearly always been 

 irregular and unforeseen ; sometimes merely fibrillar, and limited 

 to a certain radius from the needle, at other times involving an 

 entire muscle, or even several muscles at once. It is evident that, 

 in these cases, the effects have varied accordingly as the needle 

 has come into contact with nervous filaments proceeding to one or 

 to many muscles, or with muscular fibres alone. It follows that, 

 in muscular electrization by acupuncture, chance alone will preside 

 over the phenomena of contraction, and will dominate over the will 

 of the operator. 



Sarlandiere recommended that the needles should be placed at 

 a distance from nerve-trunks; and believed that the therapeutic 

 influence of electro-puncture was greatest when exerted upon the 

 nervous terminations. Magendie had the hardihood to practise 

 electro-puncture with needles that traversed the nerve-trunks 

 themselves. The latter proceeding may appear easy to those who 

 possess some anatomical knowledge; but it is by no means so 

 simple as may be imagined by those who have not tried. If it be 

 true, for instance, that we may sometimes succeed in piercing the 

 median, ulnar, and crural nerves, we cannot in like manner succeed 

 with the radial, the sciatic, or the popliteal. In the face, we may 

 place needles in the sub-orbital and mental nerves. But who could 

 pretend to hit with any certainty either the trunk or the branches 

 of the portio dura ? The method appears to me to be nearly 

 always impracticable. Moreover, it does not help us to confine 

 the electric action to the nerve. We cannot reach the latter 

 without piercing the skin, which is then inevitably excited. 



2. Electro-Juncture is insufficient or inapj)licahle in anaesthesia or 

 lesions of tactile sensibility. 



I shall hereafter show that, as a rule, in anaesthesia, cutaneous 



