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

NEURAL MALADIES OF STUMPS. 343
likely to occur, and the mobility and nutrition of the
stumps will benefit by the precaution.
Neuromata of stumps.
— At the ends of the severed
nerves, tumors of various size form. They are chiefly
masses of connective tissue, over which the nerve filaments
spread, and are finally lost to view. In most thin
stumps these enlargements can be easily felt, and very
often a thickened nerve trunk running from them is also
readily perceptible. Perhaps no stump is altogether without
these tumors, wdaich are far too apt to be regarded by
surgeons as the cause of neuralgia, a disease usually due
in stumps to neuritis or the sclerotic state which it is apt
to occasion. In all the stumps I have studied, these neuromata
existed, and are, I think, to be looked upon as
inevitable appendages.
In very many stumps, the neuromatous tumors in which
the nerves end are united to one another, or are adherent
to the bone and the cicatricial tissue of the muscles and
/
i
N euro-physiology of stumps.
— When a limb has been
skin. Owing to this fact, and to sclerotic conditions of
the nerves which lessen their natural elasticity, they
fail
to yield readily when stretched, and for this reason are
apt to suffer when the limb is suddenly and violently
moved, as in spasm or by the will. Only in this manner
can I explain the occurrence of pain and inflammation
due to such motion. A man previously well lias an
unusually violent and abrupt spasm of the deltoid, such
as has often before occurred to him in a lighter form,
and always with painful results; but on this occasion the
pain is excessive and continuous; the nerves then become
tender, neuralgia follows, and we have at last a wellmarked
case of neuritis. Although these are rare cases,
they are not to be overlooked in seeking for causes of
inflammation, and seem tome to be explained by the facts
I have mentioned.