148 LOCALIZED ELECTRIZATION. 



tlie induced current with exerting a paralysing influence upon 

 nerves." 



In presence of the knowledge of electro therapeutics gained by 

 long clinical experience, and tested by many observers in Europe 

 and even in America, to venture to say that induced currents 

 exert a paralysing influence upon the nerves seems to rae to be 

 so far to disregard the truth that I have not thought it necessary 

 to^ combat Remak's strange assertion. Clinical observation will 

 render it prompt justice. 



But I am unable any longer to keep silence upon the point, 

 since recently some young philosophers, supported by experiments 

 upon rats and rabbits, have again maintained, like Remak, that 

 induced currents paralyse the nerves, and cause the disappearance, 

 at the end of a very short time, of all their vital endowments." 



Clinical observation, I repeat, protests against such an assertion. 

 The following are the words in which I have briefly summarized 

 the facts which these observers fancy they can overturn:** — 



"In 1862 I reported^ some cases of atrophic paralysis, con- 

 secutive to traumatic lesions of mixed nerves, which were of many 

 years' standing, and in which the paralysed limbs were so wasted 

 that the muscles, Avhich no longer responded to electric excitation, 

 appeared to be entirely destroyed. The temperature of these 

 limbs was diminished, the cutaneous veins were very small, the 

 skin discoloured, earthy, and often of a violet hue. Well, under 

 the influence of direct muscular faradization, applied according to 

 certain rules which I have laid down elsewhere, I have seen, in all 

 these cases, — 1. the temperature of the limbs quickly increase; 2. 

 the cutaneous veins enlarge, and the skin return to its normal 

 colour ; 3. the muscles gradually increase in size, and regain their 

 tonic force, their sensibility, their voluntary contractility, and, 

 much later, their electric contractility also." 



Since 1852, a host of European observers have experimentally 

 tested and confirmed the reality of these electro-therapeutic results, 

 and have borne testimony to them in numerous publications. I 

 will select, as one of the most important among them, that of M. 

 R. Philippeaux, of Lyons. In America, direct muscular f\iradiza- 



^ Kemak, Galvanotherapie, etc., trans- I « Duclienne (de Boulogne), "De Za jjara- 

 lated from German into French by Dr. ' hjsie musculaire pseudo-Tiypertro'phique" 

 A. MoriDain, Paris, 1860, "Fafeitr anti- (Arch, fjene'r. de Mede'cine, Janvier, 1868). 

 paralytic dcs rouranfs induits,''" p. 447. { ^ Duchenne (de Boulogne) "Z^e Vappli- 



' Onimus et Legros, " DeV influence des \ cation de la faradisation lo.alisee au dia- 

 couranfs e'lectriques sur la nutrition" (Gaz. j gnostic, au prognostic, et au traitement des 

 des Hop, 19 Janvier, 1860.) The same \ paralysiescomecutives auxUsionsdesnerfs 

 authors had previously addressed a note mixtes" (m^moire couronne' par la Socie't^ 

 upon the question to the Acadt'mie des i de Me'de'cine de Gaud, au concours de 

 Sciences. [1852. AnnulesdelaSoc.de Med.de Gaud). 



