ACTION OF INTERKUPTED AND CONTINUOUS CURRENTS. 179 



progressive cutaneous pain at the seat of the rheophores, so acute 

 as to be almost unbearable, and besides the tingling and pricking 

 experienced in the whole course of the nerve, down to its final 

 ramifications in the fingers — similar oscillatory contractions in the 

 muscles that it supplies. 



Eemak has gone further. He professes to have observed, in 

 experiments analogous to my own, and made upon the median 

 nerve of a healthy man, with a battery of thirty of Daniell's 

 couples, the contractions continue, sometimes in the muscles 

 subject to the median, sometimes, and commonly, in the muscles 

 subject to the radial nerve, the antagonist of the median. Galva- 

 nization of the radial nerve, practised by placing the rheophores 

 on two distant points of its course, produced, on the contrary, con- 

 tinued contraction of the muscles subject to the median nerve, the 

 antagonist of the radial. These continued contractions have been 

 called galvano-tonic by Eemak — thus named, he says, to dis- 

 tinguish them from the tonic, or tetanic, contractions produced by 

 induced currents, or by constant currents often interrupted. This 

 phenomenon, on wliich Remak has built a new physiological 

 theory (but, as I shall hereafter show, an imaginary one), forms 

 the fundamental basis of that which he calls his method of 

 galvanization. 



I am sorry to have to declare that I have never been able to 

 produce these singular phenomena in the galvanic experiments 

 that I have made publicly upon human nerves in the course of my 

 clinical teaching. What can be the reason ? Is it that the acute 

 and increasing cutaneous pain, at the place of contact of the 

 rheophores, has produced involuntary movements of flexion and 

 extension of the fingers, as if the subjects sought instinctively 

 to escape from the suffering, and that these movements have 

 perhaps concealed the galvano-tonic contractions, if thoy indeed 

 occurred ? Or were they not produced, in my experiments, because 

 I have always avoided the contraction due to completion of the 

 circuit, as I have already said, or because my rheophores were too 

 near each other ? Eemak, indeed, applies one rheophore on the 

 hand, and the other at the bend of the elbow ; while, I, in general, 

 have held them only two or three centimetres apart. 



Desiring to test these electro-physiological facts announced by 

 Eemak, and to appreciate the worth of the explanation given by 

 him, I have again many times galvanized the median nerve in the 

 manner described by him. I have, moreover, not pro(?uced the so- 

 called galvano-tonic contractions, even after having allowed the 

 current to pass through the nerve for more than a minute. 

 Although I included, according to his precept, the greatest 



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