ACTION OF INTEERUPTED AND CONTINUOUS CURRENTS. 209 



Avithont intermissions, for as long a time as possible (from thirty 

 minutes to several hours), and in reducing to a minimum the 

 action of the comjDletion and of the interruption of tlie circuit. 



It is in this kind of galvanization that we have most to fear 

 the electrolytic action of the battery. Hiffelsheim, who has 

 most extolled, as I have already stated (see p. 184), the therapentic 

 ap[)lication of permanent continuous currents, has constructed a 

 small sulphate of lead battery, formed of 80 or 100 elements, 

 which are each 5 or 6 centimetres in length by 8 in width. 

 Although this little battery, the current of which is very constant 

 and the tension sufficiently great, exerts a comparatively feeble 

 electrolytic action, yet we have already seen that the permanence 

 of the current, and its long passage at the same point, will affect 

 the cutaneous surface more or less deeply (Case XV. p. 18-4.) 

 It is therefore necessary to know exactly, under such circum- 

 stances, the electrolytic power of the battery that we are about 

 to use, and to know how long the rheophores of its permanent 

 current may remain in contact with the same points of skin, 

 without producing vesications or eschars. 



It is hardly necessary to point out that galvanization by per- 

 manent continuous currents should also be divided into reflex 

 and localized ; that the former acts specially upon the nervous 

 centres, and the latter upon the periphery. 



Does reflex galvanization by stabile permanent continuous 

 currents of long duration (that is to say, for seances of from half 

 an hour to several hours in leugth, and necessarily of a dose 

 comparatively feeble) exert upon the nervous centres a more 

 powerful therapeutic influence than that of reflex galvanization 

 by continuous (stabile) currents, mixed with intermissions ? I 

 must reserve my reply to this question, which I am now engaged 

 in studying experimentally. 



I have seen localized galvanization by permanent continuous 

 currents exert a resorbent action, that Remak has called catalytic, 

 in chronic articular affections with nodosities, in ganglionic 

 tumours, in one case of muscular tumour of obscure character (I 

 regret not to have treated in this manner an analogous case to 

 which I was called in consultation with M. Nelaton), and lastly 

 in atrophy of the deltoid produced by rheumatism. I have not 

 the time to devote myself, on a sufficiently large scale, to inves- 

 tigations of this kind ; interesting, it is true, but Avhich would 

 take me too much away from my habitual clinical study of 

 maladies of the nervous centres, of the nerves, and of the muscles. 

 In the cases in which I have been obliged to apply or to cause the 

 application of this treatment, I have covered the greater part of 



