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

110 INJURIES OF NERVES.
involved, and to this succeeds a local feeling of enormous
weight, which makes movement difficult. At the same
time there is general uneasiness, with possibly syncope,
and the feeling for which there is no scientific term, but
which is known popularly as a setting of the teeth on edge,
and which seems to pass inward towards the centres.
In the muscular sphere, contractions, and even cramps,
occur, and the voluntary motions are awkward and difiicult,
while the feeling of formication returns with marked
distinctness, and the whole limb feels as though
it were
vibrating.
Finallj-, motion becomes regular, the sensory
perversions cease, and last of all the thermal sense returns,
the duration of this stage being from some minutes to a
quarter of an hour.*
Augustus Wallerf has left on record a careful study of
the effects of rapid compression of the ulnar, median, and
musculo-spiral nerves, with excellent observations upon
the temperature of the parts. The French experiments
are detailed with more method, but in essentials the two
sets of observations sufficiently agree. While, however,
Bastien and Vulpian describe as constant the curious return
of normal feelings a little while after pressure has
begun, all sense of warmth, formication, and prickling
being lost for the time, "Waller speaks of the same phenomena
as occasional in the early stages of compression.
All of these observers agree that this aftection of nerves
-may produce vertigo and nausea, but onl}- Waller has
;pointed out that when a single nerve has been pressed
iupon, the final loss of motility is not confined to its muscles
alone, and this is in strict accordance with my own
clinical experience.
It appears, therefore, that when a nerve of sensation
* Memoire sur les Effets de la Compression des Nerfs. J. B. Bastien et
A. Vulpian. Gaz. Med. de Paris, 1855, p. 794.
f Proc. London Koyal Society, Ma}- 15, 1862, p. 89 et seq.