Injuries of nerves and their consequences - Reflex Sympathetic ...

96 INJURIES OF NERVES.
also to be found in the work of my colleagues and myself,
and two very illustrative histories, one of a blow on the
neck and one of a contusion of the musculo-spiral, are
related in the Sanitary Commission Reports.*
Case 7.— David Franklyn, aged twenty-two. In October,
1820, was seen by Mr. Swan. Seven years before, he was
holding a restive horse by a halter wound tightly around his
hand and wrist, when the animal, running back, drew the
halter tight,
and bent the wrist, pulling on it violently.
Great pain ensued in the hand and wrist, and continued
ulceration of the dorsal skin of the hand followed. The
thumb and three fingers were bent back towards the wrist,
and so remained, there being loss of sensation and of touchsense.
Mr. S. amputated the hand, and found hypertrophv
of the median beneath the annular liii^ament, and
several gangliform enlargements of the digital nerves. f
Case 8.— Contusion of rigid hracMal plexus ; ixiin; consequent
loss of motion in the deltoid muscle ; wasting; cure by electricity;
rheumatism, a year later, icith renewed neuralgia and iceabiess ;
final relief.
Mrs. K., aged fifty-two,
fell and struck the
right side of lier neck against one of the round knobs of
a brass fender.
There was early swelling, and also a good
deal of pain felt in the right arm for a few minutes, owing,
as I supposed, to violence done to the brachial plexus.
In a few weeks the blood extravasated at the spot struck
was absorbed. Slight pain was, however, felt in the forearm
and hand at intervals, until the twelfth week, when it
became extreme around the shoulder-joint. ISText came
loss of motion, and w^asting in the deltoid, with increase
of tenderness at the site of the blow. Leeches were freely
used every third day at this point until the soreness diminished,
when I blistered the part twice. The shoulder pains
were now lessening, and at the fourteenth week I began
* Medical Keports, 1867, p. 412. f Swan, op. cit., p 60.