The Republican journal., 1871-12-07
The Sensation of Absent Limbs.

1t has long been known to surgeons
that when u limb has been cut off the sut-
terer does not lose the consciousness of
its existence. This has been found to be
true in nearly every such case Only
about five per cent. of the men who have
suffered amputation never have any feel
ing of the part as being still present. Of
the rest, there are few who in time do
come TO forget the missing member
while the remainder seem to retain a
sense of its existence so vivid as to be
more definite and intrusive than is that Of
its truly diving fellow-member.
A person in this condtion is haunted
as it were, by a constant or lnconStant
fractional phantom of 50 much OF himself
as has been Topped away y- an unseen
ghost of the lost part, and sometimes n
presence made sorely inconvenient by
the fact THAT while but family felt at
times, it is at others accurately called to
his attention by the pains or irritations
which it appears to suffer from blow on
the stump, or changs in the weather.
There is something almost tragical,
something ghastly, in the notion Of these
thousand Of spirit limbs haunting as many
good soldiers, and every now and then
tormenting them with the disappoint-
ments which arise when, the memory be-
ing off guard tor Il moment, the keen
sense Of the limbs presence betrays the
man into some effort, the failure of which
of a sudden reminds him of his loss.
Many persons feel the lost limb as ex-
isting the moment they awaken from the
merciful stupor Of the ether given to de-
stroy the torments of the knife others
come slowly to this consciousness in days
or weeks. and when the wound has heal
cd but, as Il rule, the more sound and
serviceable the stump, especially if an ar
tifcial be worn, the more likely is the
man to feel family the presence Of his
shorn member. Sometimes Il blow on
the stump will reawaken such conscious
ness. or, rs happened in one case, a re
amputatiOn higher up the limb will sum-
mon it anew into seeming existence.
In many. the limb may be recalled to
the man by irritating the nerves in its
stump Every doctor knows that when
any part of ners . is excited by pinch,
q tap, or by electricity-which is an alto
gether harmless means-the pain, if it
be nerve of feeling is felt as if it We're
really caused in the part to which the
ton is met with when we hurt the ''crazy-
bone" behind the elbow. This crazy-bone
is merely the ulnar nerve, which gives
and in which latter parts we feel the
numbing pain of u blow on the main
nerve. IL we were to divide this nerve
below the elbow, the pain would still
seem to be in the fingers, nor would it al
ter the case were the arm cut off. When.
therefore, the current of a battery is turn
ed upon the nerves Of an arn-stump the
irritation caused in the divided nerves is
carried to the brain, and there referred at
once to all the regions of the lost limb
from which, when entire, these nerves
brought those impressions OF touch OF
pain which the brain converts into sensa-
tions AS the electric current dlsturbs
the nerves, the limb is sometimes call
ed back to sensory being with startling
reality.
On one occasion the shoulder was thus
electrified three inces above the point
where the arm had been cut off. For two
years the man had ceased to be conscious
of the limb. AS the current passed, al
though ignorant of its possible effects, he
started up, crying aloud, ''Oh, the hand,
the hand!" and tried to seize it with the
living grasp of the sound fingers. No
resurrection of the dead, no answer of a
summoned spirit, could have been more
startling AS the current was broken,
the lost part faded again, only to be re-
called by the same means. This man has
ceased to feel his limb. With others it is
presence never absent save in sleep.
"If," says one man, II should say, am
more sure of the leg that ain't than the
one that are, guess l should be about
correct" DR.. S. Weir Mitchell, in Lip
pincott's Magazine.