On the contractility or irritability of the muscles of paralysed limbs, and their excitability by the galvanic current, in comparison with the corresponding muscles of healthy limbs / by Robert Bentley Todd.

  • Todd, Robert Bentley, 1809-1860.
Date:
[1847]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the contractility or irritability of the muscles of paralysed limbs, and their excitability by the galvanic current, in comparison with the corresponding muscles of healthy limbs / by Robert Bentley Todd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    arm, and that of the right leg but in a less degree. Her in- tellect and memory were slightly impaired. This was a hard-working washerwoman^ who had to sup- port and bring up a large family by her own industry^ her husband having been some years dead. I diagnosed the case as one of white softening, with perhaps a slight apoplectic clot or clots affecting the left hemisphere of the brain, and involving some of the fibres of the corpus striatum. As the paralysis of motion was complete in the arm, the cerebral influence being completely cut off from that limb, the case was a fair one for applying the galvanic test to the muscles of the healthy and palsied arms. The galvanic curi'ent was passed through the arms on the 10th May 1845, the hands being placed in basins, as already described. The electro-dynamic machine was employed—at first weak, without the bundle of wires, which is used to aug- ment the current, the wheel being made to revolve slowly so that the shocks succeeded each other at long intervals. By the weak current no contraction of the muscles was pro- duced in the paralysed arm—slight contractions in the sound one. By the stronger current no contractions were aroused in the muscles of the paralysed arm, until the stimulus had been continued for some time, when only very slight contrac- tions were excited, which were trifling when compared with those excited in the sound arras. This patient remained under treatment for more than a month. She acquired much more power of her leg but none of the arm. On the 27th of July she returned to the hospital. The muscles of the right arm had wasted considerably: the palsy of that member had led to its disuse, which ought to have augmented the irritabiUty of its muscles, if, as Dr. Hall affirms, the constant use of the paralytic limb diminishes its irritabihty. (Observations on Medicine, chap. xix. p. 118.) The application of the electricity, however, on this occasion led to the same result as before, namely, very shght contractions of the palsied limb, and distinct find vigorous ones of the sound