ACTION OP INTERRUPTED AND CONTINUOUS CURRENTS. 195 



publicly collected, enable us to appreciate correctly the strange 

 and contradictory assertion of Eemak. 



" It is true tliat this experimentalist proposes to laud the thera- 

 peutic superiority of the continuous current, which, he says, cures 

 lead-palsy in a marvellous manner. At the time when I write 

 these lines, I have already tried this method of galvanization upon 

 some patients with this form of disease. Out of four patients, two 

 became tired of a painful treatment, which, after three weeks, had 

 produced no amendment. A third begged me to employ the 

 localized faradization, which he had seen applied with success to 

 many of his comrades. The fourth, who has not at present been 

 more fortunate than the other three, is willing to surrender himself 

 to the continuous current for another fifteen days. 



" Certainly such a result does not enable me to sing the praises 

 of the continous current in the treatment of lead-palsy. Let us 

 hope, nevertheless, that new and more extended experiment may 

 rehabilitate the worth, so much vaunted by the German electrician, 

 of the continuous current as applied to the treatment of this 

 disorder." '^ 



1'he strange assertion of Kemak has been repeated by his adepts ; 

 and to refute it I have brought together a fresh series of cases, 

 chosen from amongst those of my clinique, in which saturnine 

 paralysis of various forms and severity has been cured by 

 localized faradization. I should add that, after having con- 

 tinued to test, in my room, the therapeutic value of galvanization 

 by Remak's method, as applied to the treatment of this form of 

 paralysis, I have again found it inferior to localized faradization. 



C. — Electro-muscular contractility. — The muscles which, in certain 

 forms of paralysis, no longer contract under the influence of 

 localized faradization, may sometimes still be thrown into con- 

 traction by the intermissions of a voltaic current, when these 

 muscles or their nerves have been traversed, for one or two 

 minutes, by a continuous current. 



This phenomenon, which, for the first time, was described by 

 Eemak '^ in pathological conditions, had been previously experi- 

 mentally discovered in animals, by R. Heidenhain,^ who observed 

 that on submitting a muscle to the shocks of induction, or on 

 tiring it by stretching, or on plunging it into hot water (28° to 30° 

 Cent.), it lost its excitability ; and that this property (the faculty of 

 contracting under the influence of electric excitation) was restored 

 to it by the continuous current of a Daniell's battery of 25 or 30 



•^ DucheDne, Electrisation localisee, 2" 

 edition, p. 328. 

 ' Eemak, lor. cit. 



* Heidenhain, Physiologische Studien. 

 Berlin, 1856, pp. 55-127. 



O 2 



