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

196 INJURIES OF NERVES.
injuries of nerves from compression or contusions, the
other forms of pain are more apt to prevaiL
Perhaps few persons who are not physicians can realize
the influence which long-continued and unendurable pain
may have upon both body and mind. The older books
are full of cases in which, after lancet wounds, the most
terrible pain and local spasms resulted. When these had
lasted for days or weeks, the whole surface became
hypersesthetic, and the, senses grew to be only avenues
for fresh and increasing tortures, until every vibration,
every change of light, and even, as in Miss Willson's case,*
the effort to read brought on new agony. Under such
torments the temper changes, the most amiable grow
irritable, the soldier becomes a coward, and the strongest
man is scarcely less nervous than the most hysterical girl.
Perhaps nothing can better illustrate the extent to which
these statements may be true than the cases of burning
pain, or, as I prefer to term it, causalgia, the most terrible
of all the tortures which a nerve wound may inflict.
In delineating this form of pain, perhaps I cannot do
better than transfer to these pages the account originally
written while I was seeing almost daily numbers of
persons suffering as I have described them :
" In our early experience of nerve wounds, we met with
a small number of men who were suffering from a pain
which they described as a 'burning,' or as '
mustard redhot,'
or as a ' red-hot tile rasping the skin.' In all of these
was an asso-
patients, and in many later cases, this pain
ciate of the glossy skin previously described. In fact,
this state of skin never existed without burning pain.
Recently we have seen numbers of men who had burning
pain without glossy skin, and in some we have seen this
latter condition commencing. The burning comes first.
* Swan, op. cit.