The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1873-07-11
M i S G g IIaneo OIL s.
Phantom Limbs.

A late number of LippincOtt's Nagazine
has an article by DR.. S. Mitchell in regard to
sensations experienced after limb has been
amputated. 1t has long been known to sur
geons that when 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 case. Only about five per
cent. of the men who have suffered amputa-
ton 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
a sense of its existence SO vivid as to be
more definite and intrusive than is that of
its truly living fellow member. A person in
this condition is haunted as it were by
constant or inconstant fractional phantom
Of so much of himself as has been Topped
away-an unseen ghost Of the lost part and
sometimes Il presence made sorely incon-
venient by the fact that while but family
felt at times it is at Others acutely called to
his attention by the pains or irritations
which it appears to suffer from blow on
the stump, or change in the weather.
There is something almost tragical, some
thing almost CHASTITY, in the notion of
these thousands ofspirit 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 for a moment, the keen sense
Of the limbs presence betrays the man in
to some effort, the failure of which of a
sudden reminds him of his loss.
Many persons feel the lest limb as exist
ing the moment they awaken from the mcr-
citul stupor of the ether given to destroy
the torments of the knife; others come slow
ly to this consciousness in days or weeks,
and when the wound is healed; but as a rule
the more sound and serviceabc the stump,
especially if an artificial limb be worn, the
more likely is the man to feel family the
presence of his shorn member. Sometimes
blow on the stump will reawaken such
consciousness, or as happened in one case,
a reamputation higher up the limb will
summon 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 a nerve is excited by pinch, a tap,
or by which is an altogether
harmless means-the pain, if it be u nerve
of feeling, is felt as if it were really caused
in the part to which the nerve finally pass
es A familiar illustration is met with
when we hurt the "craZy- bonen behind the
elbow. This crazy-bone is merely the ul-
mar nerve, which gives sensation to the
third and fourth fingers, and in which lat
ter parts we feel the numbing pain of
blow on the main nerve. FIVE were to di-
vide this nerve below the elbow, the pain
would still seem to be in the fingers, nor
| would it alter the case were the arm cut off.
When, therefore, the current of q battery is
turned upon the nerves of an arm 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 touch or pain which
| the brain converts into sensations AS the
electric current disturDs the nerves, the limb
is sometimes called back to sensory being
with startling reality.
On one occasion the shoulder was thus
electrified three inches 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 although
ignorant of its possible effect, 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
|
could have been more startling. AS the
current was broken the lost part faded
again, only to be recalled by the same
means. This man had ceased to feel his
limb. With others it is presence never
absent save in sleep. "If," says one man,
Il should say, am more sure of the leg
which amt than of the one that are, guess
! should be about correct"
Absurd mishaps sometimes reminds men
of the unreliability of these ghostly mem.
bers, which seem to them so distinctly mate
rial. In one case, man believed for mo-
ment that he had struck another with the
absent hand. A very gallant fellow, who
had lost an arm at Shiloh, was always ac-
utely conscious of the limb as still present.
On one occasion, when riding, he used the
lost hand to grasp the reins while with the
other he struck his horse. He paid for
his blunder with fall. Sensitive people
are curiously moved by the mental shock
which comes from such failures ofpurposc
In one case, the poor fellow, at every meal
for many months, would try to pick up his
fork, and failing would be suddenly seized
with nausea so that at last his wife ha-
bitually warned him.