ACTION OF INTERRUPTED AND CONTINUOUS CURRENTS. 183 



tion are better defined, and more clearly formulated, it will be 

 difficult to judge of their actual value. 



{a). After Eemak's method, the galvanic currents are applied 

 with a kind of intermissions closely approximated, as I will proceed 

 to show. In his experiments at La Charite, in 1860, every one saw 

 that, when the current was made to pass through the muscular 

 nerves, by placing the negative pole over the point of entrance 

 of the muscular branch, and the positive pole over a point nearer 

 to the spinal cord, he dwelt but a very short time (fifteen to thirty 

 seconds), over the muscle to be electrified, and soon drew one or 

 both of his rheophores over the surface, to fix them upon other 

 points. In this way he produced what have been called labile 

 contractions. But, as I have said above, these contractions are 

 produced by a kind of intermissions, and only differ by their less 

 intensity from those that are produced by actual intermissions.^ 

 Such also is the opinion of M. Eosenthal.^ Nay more, these labile 

 contractions are produced by a veritable localized galvanization 

 by intermittent currents, which is shown elsewhere by phenomena 

 analysed by Kemak himself: "When the excitability is sufficient," 

 he says, " or when it is artificially increased by tlie current, the 

 labile contractions are produced by changing the place of one or 

 both rheophores, without breaking the circuit, or interrupting the 

 contact of their moist coverings with the skin. The muscular 

 fibres that are touched by the rheojphore contract, u'hile those that the 

 rheo^hore leaves become relaxed. If the moving rheophore follows, 

 over the muscle, the course of a nerve, all the fibres supplied by 

 this nerve are called into action, when the sensibility is strong ; 

 those which are without the circuit in a much less degree, so that 

 the local action on the muscular fibres might appear to be 

 predominant." ^ 



Who is there that will not recognise, in all these phenomena, 

 those which are proper to localized galvanization ? Kemak himself 

 has said as much in the lines that I have quoted, without under- 

 standing their significance. 



It appears, then, that each of the seances, which we all witnessed 

 at La Charite, was composed of a great number of weak (labile) 

 galvanic intermissions, and of a certain number of continuous 



* Remak seems to me to have admitted 

 this iu the following passage : — " It is very 

 important," he writes, "in relation to 

 therapeutics, to be acquainted with the 

 labile contractions, which I was the first 

 to observe in man. These contractions 

 are produced in the muscular nerve or in 

 the muscles, without interruption of the 



current, by simple oscillations of its 

 density ; according to the law laid down 

 by Dubois Eeymond, that a muscle re- 

 sponds by a contraction, not only to an 

 interruption, but also to an oscillation of 

 the current. (Loc. cit., p. 120.) 



* Loc. cit., p. 121. 



' Hiflfelsheim, loc. cit., p. 12. 



