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

LESIONS OF SPECIAL NERVES. 323
The cerebral
symptoms which may follow sympathetic
nerve lesions demand particular
attention in any future
records of such wounds. In Mooney's case they were
loss of memory, vertigo, and headache, and were severe
enough to keep him in a hospital long after the wound
had healed.
Iniuries of the seventh or facial nerve — Mechanical injuries
of this nerve are rare, and are valuable because they set
in clearer light the precise meaning of symptoms which
are common to all the modes of paralysis to which it is
subject.
Injury to the facial nerve causes simply palsy of the
muscles of the face, excepting such as are fed by the motor
branch of the fifth nerve. It is therefore easy of recognition.
The features relaxed and flabby and drawn to the
uninjured side, the drooping mouth angle, the unwinking
eye, constantly open, occlusion of light being eftected only
by rolling the ball upward, the unwrinkled forehead and
the motionless nostril make up a pathological sketch easy
enouo-h of recosrnition whatever its cause.
I have seen no case of traumatic injury to the seventh
nerve at its cerebral origin,
where it is sometimes compressed
by pathological
formations. The records of
injury to the nerve in its passage through the temporal
bone are more frequent, but lesions of the nerve after
exit on the face are rare, on account of its
deep position
and the protection afforded it
by the neighlDoring parts,
so that it is not often hurt in this part of its course unless
divided by the surgeon's knife during removal of the
parotid gland.
Injuries of the facial, after emergence on the neck, occasion
simple palsy of the face without any affection of
the tongue or throat, and such lesions cause results precisely
similar to those which are produced by exposure
to cold, the common cause of simple facial palsy.
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