PERIPHERAL PALSY. 363 



yond the power of their will, and they spare neither time nor money 

 hi order to subject themselves to a treatment in which ineffectual 

 though it be they place the utmost confidence. The degeneration 

 of peripheral nerves, which soon follows upon their separation from 

 the central organs, and which we are able to demonstrate anatomically, 

 accounts, in some measure, for the early extinction of electric contrac- 

 tility in peripheral palsy. Nor, for the same reason, should we wonder 

 that it soon ceases in rheumatic palsy, and in cases of lead-poisoning. 

 No matter how slight the disease from which the nerve suffers in such 

 a case, it will always suffice to bring about in it such a change that 

 neither the will nor the application of the induced current is capable 

 of producing excitement in it. In cerebral palsy, also, a degeneration 

 of the peripheral nerve finally sets in, as well as an atrophy and fatty 

 degeneration of the unemployed muscles. Hence, in very old cases, 

 loss of electric contractility can no longer be made use of as a means 

 of distinction between central and peripheral palsy. In spinal palsy 

 the electric contractility is sometimes long retained, while at other 

 times it speedily ceases. Hence, it is of little worth in a diagnostic 

 point of view. I believe that these differences may be accounted for, 

 in some degree, from the results of the investigations of the structure 

 of the spinal marrow by Schroeder van der Kolk. "Where centrifugal 

 fibres exist in the spinal marrow, which, instead of passing to the pe- 

 ripheral nerves, first go to the ganglion-cells from which the peripheral 

 nerves spring, it would seem (arguing from analogy) that, upon de- 

 struction of this first set of fibres, a similar condition, as regards the 

 electric contractility, exists, as obtains in cerebral palsy, while, upon 

 destruction of the fibres proceeding from the ganglion-cells, the condi- 

 tion is analogous to that of a peripheral paralysis. It is remarkable 

 that, in many cases of peripheral palsy, the muscles can be made to 

 contract, by means of the constant current, while the induced current 

 will fail of effect, and, still more strange, that streams so feeble as to 

 excite no contraction upon the unaffected side will induce it upon the 

 paralyzed side. We have no satisfactory explanation of this circum- 

 stance, which I have met with in two cases of rheumatic palsy in the 

 course of a single semester. One thing, however, may be deduced 

 from our previous remarks : that the character of the irritation pro- 

 duced in a nerve by the constant current, with its catalytic action, is 

 essentially different from that caused by the induced current. 



Separation of a motor nerve from the central organs and the ex- 

 tinction of its irritability induce the same derangements of circulation 

 and of nutrition which we have described while treating of the pe- 

 ripheral anaesthesias, and such derangements are particularly severe in 

 cases where ana?sthesia and acinesis exist together. Lowering of the 



