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

352 INJURIES OF NERVES.
learns by degrees to associate in place the lost hand, which
seems to feel, with the stump, the latter being the lowest
existent point impressions
on which are referred to the
hand. Now, we may conceive that if, for motor purposes,
we substitute for the lost limb an artificial member Avhich
does not possess feeling, the sense of sight will soon
refer, in our consciousness, the hand or foot to its old
position. Exactly this is described as occurring by two
observant and acute persons who have lost legs.
One of
them, who sees in his business capacity hundreds of the
amputated every year, assures me that his experience is
a common one. He lost his leg at the age of eleven, and
remembers that the foot by degrees approached, and at
last reached, the knee. When he began to wearan artificial
leg it reassumed, in time, its old position, and he is
never,
at present, aware of the leg as shortened,
unless for some
time he talks and thinks of the stump and of the missing
leg, when, as happens in many who have submitted to
amputation, the direction of attention to the part causes a
feeling of discomfort, and the subjective sensation of active
and unpleasant movement of the toes. With these feelings
returns at once the delusion of the foot as being
placed at the knee.
Gueniot is of opinion that the hallucination as to the
shortening of the limb is most apt to occur in cases of
amputation which heal most kindly and offer the most
healthy stumps. I have been unable to make out any
such relation.
—
Subjective sensations referred to the absent limb. In a few
cases there is no distinct subjective symptom to remind
the patient of his limb, but in nearly all there is some
feeling, such as pain, itching, or other sensation.
I have found no one who ever had the subjective delusion
of the lost part being touched; but itching is quite
to the backs of the
common, and is referred usually