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

INJURIES OF
NERVES.
CHAPTER I.
INTKODUCTORT.
.
English medical literature
contains no complete treatise
on injuries of nerves and the diseases consequent upon
them. In fact, few persons have at any time in medical
history been so situated as to command the peculiar
opportunity which has fallen to the lot of the writer of
these pages, and which alone he feels may justify him
in adding another to the numerous monographs which
to-day claim the attention of the profession.
In May, 1863, Dr. Wm. A. Hammond, then Surgeon-
General of the H. S.
Army, requested me to share with
Dr. George Morehouse the medical charge of an army
hospital for nervous diseases, the foundation of which I
had suggested to the medical bureau, over which at that
time Dr. Hammond presided with such ability as has
caused his name to be inseparably associated with the
medical and surgical history of the late civil war.*
* When this hospital was organized, I urged upon the Surgeon-General
the necessity of freeing its medical staff from the usual administrative
duties which take up so much of the time of our military hospital
surgeons. Arrangements were therefore made which permitted us to
devote to our cases all available time, and left the government of the
house in charge of a competent surgeon-in-chief. I may be permitted
to add, that when Dr. Hammond left office he had established special
wards or hospitals for diseases of the eye, for syphilis, for stumps, for
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