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

CHAPTER XL
TREATMENT— CONTINUED.
Loss of motion.— We have already seen
how motion, at
first altogether lost, in cases of partial lesion reappears
in certain muscles, so that after a time we may know
what muscles are permanently palsied. Both for purposes
of diagnosis and of treatment, it is well to faradise
the part at the close of a fortnight,
if the .wound be
such as to admit of this. We shall then discover that
certain of the muscles respond readily, and others not at
all, while some revive after two or three sittings.
These
latter have probably been isolated from the centres for
a time by mere mechanical disturbance in their connecting
nerves. Those which refuse all answer are completely
cut off from the spine by section or grave injury
of their nerves. While making this statement, I do
not wish to assert, with Duchenue, that the muscular irritability
is lost because the muscle does not stir when faradised,
for Yulpian has shown that in rabbits, where a
nerve has been cut, and the isolated muscle, faradised
through the clean and shaven skin, does not move, a
current applied to the exposed muscle will cause it to
shorten.
Even after several weeks, the muscles in man may be
made to exhibit some contraction
by passing electricity
directly through them with the aid of needles.* JSIoreover,
galvanism will oftentimes elicit an answer after in-
* Landry, Traite coruplet des Paralysies,
t. i. p. 103. Paris, 1859.