The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1872-02-23
Phantom Limbs.

1t has long been known to surgeons
that when a limb has been cut off the
sufferer 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 feeling of the part as being still
present. OF the rest, there are few
who in time come to forget the missing
member, while the remainder seem to
retain n sense of its existence so vivid
as to be more definite and intrusive than
| is that of its truly living fellow men,
| Der.
a person in this condition is haunted,
as it were, by a constant or incOnstant
| fractional phantom or so much of him.
self as has been Topped away-an unseen
ghost of the lost part, and sometimes a
presence made sOrely incOnvenient by
| the fact that while but family felt at
times, it is at others accutely called to
his attention by the pains or irritatiOns
which it appears TO suffer from a blow
on the stump or change in the
weather.
/ There is something almost tragieal
something CHASTITY, in the notion of
these thousands of spirit limbs haunting
as many good soldiers, and every now
and then tOrmenting them with the dis
/ appointments which arise when, the
memory being off guard for moment,
the keen sense of the limbs presence be-
trays the man into some effort, the fail
ure of which of sudden reminds him
| of his loss
! Many persons feel the lost limb as ex-
isting the moment they awake from the
merciful stupor of ether given to destroy
the tOrments of the knife; others come
slowly to this consciousness in days or
weeks, and when the wound has healed;
but as rule, the more sound and service
able the stump, especially if an arti-
| fcial limb be worn, the more likely is
the man to feel family the presence of
his shOrn member. Sometimes a blow
on the stump will reawaken such con-
sciOusness, or, as happened in one case,
a reamputatiOn higher up the limb will
summon it anew into seeming exist
ence.
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 a nerve iseXcited by pinch,
q tap, or by electricity-which is an al
together harmless means-the pain, if it
be n nerve of feeling, is felt as it were
really caused in the part to which the
) nerve finally passes. A familiar illus
tratiOn is met with when we hurt the
I tIuLN -uOllC DCillLNl LllG tlDOW. 1nlS
} craZy-bOne is merely the ulnar nerve,
: which gives sensation to the third and
, fourth fingers, and in which the latter
parts we feel the numbing pain of blow
+ on the main nerve. If we were to adj
: vide this nerve below the elbow, the
I pain would still seem to be in the fin
gers, nor would it alter the case were
, the arm cut off. When therefore, the
current of a battery is turned upon the
nerves of an arm stump, the irritation
T caused in the divided nerves is carried
! to the brain, and there referred at once
I to all the regions of the lost limb from
1 which, when entire, those nerves brought
:, those impressions of touch or pain
e which the brain converts into sensa-
: tiOns. As the electric current disturbs
/ the nerves, the limb is sometimes called
+ back to sensOry being with startling re-
t ality.
e On one occasion the shoulder was thus
! electrified three inches above the point
I where the arm had been cut of. For
! two years the man had ceased to be
!. conscious of the limb. As the current
1 passed, although ignorant of its possible
Il effect, he started up, crying aloud, "Oh,
the hand, the hand?" and tried to seize
5 it with the living grasp of the sound fin
I gers. No resurrection of the dead, no
S answer of a summoned spirit, could have
e been more startling. As the current
II was broken the lost part faded again,
e only TO be recalled by the same means.
e This man had ceased to feel his limb.
lr With others it is a presence never alb
sent i'll sleep.-LippulcOtf Magazine.