Another method of employing electricity at high potential is by the
employment of high frequency currents. There are two methods of
application: that in which brush discharges are made use of, with
undoubtedly good effects in many of the diseases affecting the surface
of the body, and that in which the currents of the solenoid are made to
traverse the patient directly. The physiological value of the latter
method is not certain, though one point of interest in connexion with it
is that whereas statical applications raise the blood pressure, high
frequency applications lower it. It has been used in the case of old
people with arterio-sclerosis, and the reduction of blood pressure
produced is said to have shown considerable permanence.
_The Faradic Current._--G.B. Duchenne was the first physician to make
use of the induced current for treatment, and the term "faradization" is
supposed to be due to him. But in his day the differences between the
two currents available, the primary and the secondary, were not worked
out, and they were used somewhat indiscriminately. Nowadays it is
generally accepted that the primary current should be used for the
stimulation of deep-lying organs, as stomach and intestines, &c., while
the secondary current is employed for stimulation of the limb muscles
and the cutaneous sensory nerves. The faradic current is also used as a
means of diagnosis for neuro-muscular conditions. When the interrupted
current is used to stimulate the skin over a motor nerve, all the
muscles supplied by that nerve are thrown into rapid tetanic
contraction, the contraction both beginning and ceasing sharply and
suddenly with the current. This is the normal reaction of the nerve to
faradism. If the muscle be wasted from disuse or some local cause
unconnected with its nerve-supply, the contraction is smaller, and both
arises and relaxes more slowly. But if the lesion lies in the nerve
itself, as in Bell's palsy, the muscles no longer show any response when
the nerve is stimulated, and this is known as the reaction of
degeneration in the nerve. It is usually preceded by a condition of
hyperexcitability. These results are applied to distinguish between
functional paralysis and that due to some organic lesion, as in the
former case the reaction of faradism will be as brisk as usual. Also at
the beginning of most cases of infantile paralysis many more groups of
muscles appear to be affected than ultimately prove to be, and faradism
enables the physician to distinguish between those groups of muscles
that are permanently paralysed owing to the destruction of their trophic
centre, and those muscles which are only temporarily inhibited from
shock, and which with proper treatment will later regain their full
power. In the testing of muscles electrically that point on the skin
which on stimulation gives the maximum contraction for that muscle is
known as the "motor point" for that muscle. It usually corresponds to
the entry of the motor nerve.
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