178 LOCALIZED ELECTRIZATION. 



or destroy their excitability. But this objection might be made 

 again, even when I had unsuccessfully experimented with a more 

 powerful battery. And who would attempt such experiments 

 upon man ? Who would willingly submit to very painful experi- 

 ments, capable of producing vesications, and even eschars, upon 

 the skin ? 



It will also be objected, that I did not experiment under the 

 same conditions, and that I should have caused the currents to pass 

 through nerves previously laid bare. But it is demonstrated, I 

 repeat, that I act with as much certainty through the skin, as 

 I could do upon nerves exposed and isolated. My method seems 

 to me to be even preferable to that employed by Matteuci and 

 his predecessors ; because the mutilation of a nerve, and its con- 

 tact with the atmosphere, must inevitably exert a certain influence 

 upon its vitality, or upon its excitability. 



II. — The experimental researches of Eemak. 



The facts and the electro-physiological considerations, that I 

 have stated above, were made the subject of a work that I pub- 

 lished in 1852. But, since then, Remak has experimented- anew 

 wpon the action of continuous constant currents upon the nerves 

 of healthy and of diseased men ;■* and he claims to have discovered 

 electro-physiological facts, which to me do not appear to be 

 demonstrated, and which, if they were real, would possess neither 

 tlie weight nor the importance that he assigns to them. 



We know that galvauic electricity possesses the property of 

 producing a muscular contraction at the completion, and at the 

 interruption of the circuit ; the former being stronger than the 

 latter. It has been stated that, during the interval between these 

 two periods, the continuous current j)roduces no contractions. I 

 have myself only observed the occurrence of fibrillar, oscillatory, 

 and irregular contraction in the muscles of a limb that was 

 traversed by a continuous current, powerful, and as constant as 

 possible. I have also found that a galvanic current, directed u^^on 

 the fifth nerve, produced an intense luminous sensation at the 

 completion of the circuit, and a similar but less intense sensation 

 at its interruption, and between these two periods, during the 

 passage of the continuous current, a luminous sensation that w^as 

 only appreciable in obscurity. (See Chap. I., p. 13.) When I have 

 applied the moist rheophores over the median nerve, one by the 

 inner border of the biceps, the other at the passage of the nerve 

 over the bend of the arm, I have observed — besides the acute and 



* Remak, Galvanotherapie. 



