The medical application of electricity / by William F. Channing.

  • William Francis Channing
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical application of electricity / by William F. Channing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    sensation in the appropriate nerves are thus imitated, or excited, by the electric current, the impression varying in tone with the nature of the current, and receiving its character, as a sensation, from the organ to which it is conveyed. 10. A more precise view of the relations of elec- tricity to the nervous system is furnished by Matteucci, in the following comparative statement.* He ob- serves, that electricity differs from any other nervous stimulant, 1st, in that it excites sensation at onetime, and contraction at another, according to the direction in which it traverses a nerve ; 2d, in that it does not excite a nerva when passing through it transversely ; 3d, in that neither contraction nor sensation are pro- duced when its influence upon a nerve is prolonged; 4th, in that it alone has the property of increasing or diminishing the excitability of a nerve according to the direction in which it is made to flow ] 5th, in that it has the power of awakening the excitability of a nerve after all other stimulants have ceased to act. Beyond this, however, as might be anticipated, elec- tricity reacts with the vital agent of the tissues, as well as of the nervous system. Thus, when a gal- vanic current is sent through a limb, in the opposite direction to the motor nervous current, a muscular contraction takes place, which Marianini has called idiopathic^ or the result of the immediate stimulus of galvanism on the muscular tissue; but, when the current is sent in the direction of the ramification of the nerves, a stronger, or sympathic contraction takes * London Lancet. September \M1.
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