156 LOCALIZED ELECTRIZATION. 



hereafter relate a case in which neuro-paralytic hypersemia of the 

 conjunctiva and vessels of one eye, consecutive to a lesion of the 

 cervical sympathetic, had continued, at a very high degree, for a 

 period of two years, without in any way modifying the anatomical 

 state of the hyperaemic parts ; and without producing the slightest 

 exudation ; while a conjunctivitis of the other eye, due to exposure 

 to a current of air, had rapidly displayed all the symptoms of acute 

 inflammation, with a slight formation of pus. 



It is, however, impossible to overlook, in a case of the cure of 

 atrophic paralysis due to traumatic or spontaneous lesion of nerve 

 or cord, such as I have already related, the influence of the fara- 

 dization upon the activity of the local circulation, uj)on the nutri- 

 tion of the muscles, and upon the general nutrition of the limb to 

 which it is applied. 



But how is this therapeutic action to be explained ? I am 

 unable to attribute it to a kind of gymnastic effect produced upon 

 the muscles by faradization, because the muscles had lost their 

 electric irritability. Neither do I believe that excitation only of 

 the nervous fibres, which govern motricity and sensibility, would 

 have power to produce tlie results. From all the evidence, I 

 think that the direct muscular faradization promotes the capillary 

 (local) circulation and the nutrition. I had not neglected to point 

 out the last electro-therapeutic fact, and to bring it into promin- 

 ence in the earlier editions of this treatise; but I was then 

 limited to setting forth the results of clinical observation in 

 empirical fashion, since science was not sufficiently advanced to 

 justify the framing of any theory whatever. 



What has been the mechanism ? In other words, by what class 

 of nerves have the nutrition and the capillary circulation been 

 promoted ? 



It is with fear that I approach this question. In all my earlier 

 researches into the physiology of movement, the problems to be 

 solved have always been in harmony with anatomy, with electro- 

 muscular experiments, and with clinical observation. On the 

 contrary, in tlie new path on which I am now to enter, I cannot 

 make a step without proceeding from hypothesis to hypothesis, 

 relying only upon the great discoveries of experiment. 



II. On the Nerves which pkomote Local Circulation ? 



A. — Historical retrospect. — The section of the great sympathetic, 

 made by Pourfour-du-Petit in 1727,^ is the fundamental fact 



* Pom-four-du-Petit, " Memoire dans I tent des esprits dans Us yeux " (Mem. de 

 lequel il est demontre' que hs nerfs infer- VAcad. des Sciences, Paris, 1727). 

 costauz fournissent des rameaux qui por- \ 



