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

164 INJURIES OF NERVES.
and unable to bear the lio-htest touch.
Bellino;eri noticed
the hair as becoming thicker and harder and as growing
faster than elsewhere; while yet more singnlar
is the history
which Hamilton* relates on the authority of Crampton.
A lancet wound was followed by remarkable symptoms,
probably due to neuritis affecting an hysterical
temperament. Among other changes in the part, the
arm became thickly covered with hair. Section of the
nerve gave partial relief, and iinally a cure was obtained
after an attack of pneumonia, in which the patient was
salivated.
Loss of hair after nerve sections is occasionally met
with in animals, especially rabbits, and it is sometimes
renewed without reunion of the nerve having taken place.
Further study is yet needed as to the state of the hair
and nails, especially the latter, as revealing neural or other
conditions of disease. Beau has paid most attention to the
subject, but not in nervous maladies. As one of its diffi-
mention that while after nerve sections
culties, I may
the nails still
grow, I have latelj^
discovered that for
some time after certain cerebral palsies they do not do
so.f This observation was made in four instances of
cerebral palsy, by staining the nails with nitric acid. The
nails began to grow anew in every case a few days before
motion returned in the fingers, but the rate of
increase was for a long time slower than upon the healthy
side. I have since observed the same facts in embolus
of the left hemisphere with right hemiplegia. It may
constitute a new diagnostic difference between central
and peripheral paralysis.
The following case is a singular example of the effects
of a punctured wound of a nerve in a child of hysterical
* Dublin Jour, of Chemical and Med. Science, March, 1868.
fKepts. Phil. Coll. Phys., Am. Jour. Med. Sci., 1871.