With regard to the management of muscular atrophies by electricity, massage, and strychnia, the same rules are to be followed which are laid down in the section on the Myopathic Atrophies. It is only to be specially remarked that few authorities encourage the administration of strychnia in sclerotic affections, and fewer still in such large doses as could be of any benefit in a wasting process.
Faradization of the affected eye-muscles is often useful in diplopia. The current may be applied by means of a cup-shaped eye-electrode, or, better, by using a finger as an electrode.
The moral management of sufferers from sclerotic spinal affections is very important. The popular notion about spinal disease generally is such that the announcement made to a patient that he is suffering from any form of it is as alarming as would be the discovery of a tumor in his brain or a cancer in his stomach, and exerts a depressing effect. This it should be sought to avoid. A large number of sufferers from sclerosis live longer and suffer less than a portion of those afflicted with rheumatic and gouty affections; and the physician is justified in obtaining the desirable effect which a hopeful or resigned state of the mind undoubtedly has on the body, by laying great stress on this undeniable fact.
CONCUSSION OF THE BRAIN AND SPINAL CORD.
BY WILLIAM HUNT, M.D.
The writer was asked to contribute a short article upon Concussion of the Brain and Spinal Cord for this work, as these injuries are apt at first to come under the notice, if not charge, of the general practitioner. The article will therefore not be an exhaustive one, and there will be little but the details of personal experience and less quoting of authorities. Much has been written recently upon the subject both in volume and in pamphlet.
Diverse views of equally competent judges of the matter have been put forth, and the brains and spinal cords of the partisans appear to have received as severe a shaking up as the real recipients of the lesions, if absolute lesions there be.