NEURALGIA. 325 



on the results of experiments made on healthy frogs and rabbits, fur 

 nish no useful data for the explanation of cures induced in diseased hu- 

 man beings by the employment of electricity. Supposing, in a paral- 

 ysis, neuralgia, or anaesthesia, we can succeed in changing the electro- 

 tonus of the affected nerve, which I do not at all deny, there is not the 

 slightest probability that we shall thus remove the textural changes 

 which lie at the root of the existing paralysis, anaesthesia, or neuralgia. 

 On the contrary, if cure results, we may make up our minds that, besides 

 the changes of the electrotonus, some other action has been induced. 

 And supposing we succeed, by a few minutes' irritation of the sympa- 

 thetic, in contracting the vessels supplied with nerves from that part, 

 for the length of the sitting, which I also shall not deny, it is just as 

 improbable that we should thus remove a disturbance of innervation 

 existing in the parts supplied by the contracted vessels. If application 

 of the constant current to the sympathetic causes a cure, we may sup- 

 pose that the disease depended on some disturbance of nutrition of the 

 sympathetic, that has been removed by the catalytic action of the cur- 

 rent. The marked difference between the constant and induced current 

 in regard to their chemical action on water, solutions of salt, albumen, 

 etc., has long been known, and I am fully convinced that the introduc- 

 tion of the former into practice is one of the most valuable advances 

 of modern times, and that in the constant current we have a means, 

 more powerful than any other, of modifying the nutritive conditions 

 of parts that are deeply situated. But I fear that the rationalistic and 

 doctrinal teachings about galvanotherapeutics, which are recently so 

 popular, and the attempts to make this so "exact," may interfere 

 with moderate and experimental observation, and injure the popularity 

 of an important remedy. 



In the same class as electrical treatment come the blisters, moxae, 

 actual cautery, and cutaneous irritants, which are used as derivatives 

 to the skin, and which are being more and more supplanted by elec- 

 tricity. Superficial linear cauterization is considered, particularly in 

 France, as one of the most effective of remedies. 



Among the means by which the excitability of the nerves is de- 

 stroyed, we shall first mention cold. Besides compresses of cold water 

 and ice, lotions with ether and liquor Hollandicus are used ; these in- 

 duce cold by their rapid evaporation. If they are more effective than 

 ice-compresses, it is because they are breathed in at the same time, 

 and to some extent stupefy the patient. Cold is a valuable pallia- 

 tive ; we cannot generally continue its use long enough for a radical 

 cure. The narcotics, particularly in the form of hypodermic injections 

 of solutions of morphia, are at present the most common remedies for 

 neuralgia. Formerly, if the local action of morphia was desired, a 



