142 LOCALIZED ELECTRIZATION. 



precordial weiglit, and the suffocation, were in my judgment symp- 

 tomatic of the paralysing influence of diphtheritic poisoning upon 

 the origin (ganglion) of the vagus nerve. Such, indeed, are the 

 symptoms which display themselves in an animal in which the 

 pneumogastrics are divided; excepting, of course, the sensations 

 of precordial weight and of suffocation, of which the animal could 

 give no account. I have also observed the same symptoms in the 

 last stage of disease (glosso-labio-laryngeal paralysis) ; that is, at 

 the period when tlie anatomical lesion, which appeared to be an 

 ascending sclerosis of the cord, with wasting of certain cells, had 

 reached the ganglion of the vagus. 



I observed that, whenever these functional disorders of the 

 cardiac circulation appeared in Madame X., they were removed, 

 as if by enchantment, by cutaneous faradization of the precordial 

 region ; and if I departed from that region, moving my manual 

 rheophore to other parts of the chest, the patient experienced no 

 benefit, and quickly pointed with her own hand to the precordial 

 region, to indicate the point to which the electricity should be 

 applied. 



Since, in this kind of therapeutic experimentation, the excitation 

 of the sensibility of the skin, practised in the precordial region, 

 was alone able to modify, and even to remove, by its reflex action, 

 grave disorders of the cardiac circulation produced by a morbid state 

 of the innervation of the pneumogastric, it is reasonable to con- 

 clude that there exists an intimate relation between the cutaneous 

 sensibility of the precordial zone and the origin of the pneumo- 

 gastric ; or, in other words, that the former is in reflex commu- 

 nication with the latter. 



Another therapeutic result, observed during the progress of tlie 

 case, confirmed the belief that a special reflex action is exerted 

 upon the pneumogastric ganglia through the cutaneous nerves 

 of the precordial region; and this was the fact, that certain dis- 

 orders of the respiration could only be overcome by cutaneous 

 faradization of another thoracic region. It was found that fara- 

 dization of the precordial region was powerless against the 

 weakened expiration (paralysis of the lung, or of the bronchial 

 muscles) which followed the pneumogastric paralysis ; \^ hile fara- 

 dization of the back of the chest relieved this weakened expira- 

 tion on several occasions, so as to diminish or dispel, for a certain 

 time, the sufferings of the patient, to give her some repose, and to 

 delay, for several days, the asphyxia which at last terminated the 

 scene. We may therefore conclude also that the sensibility of 

 the cutaneous zone of that thoracic region which corresponds 

 to the posterior aspect of the lungs, is in special relation with the 



