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

358 INJURIES OF NERVES.
lu some of these cases, as in forearm amputations low
down, the muscles which chiefly move the finders are
present, wholly or in part, and move readily under volitional
impulses, so that whatever knowledge of movements
comes to the sensorium through the muscles moved
is here not wantins:.
In others, as in shoulder-joint cases or amputations
through the humerus, the muscles which act on the hand
are absent altogether; yet in these there is fully as clear
and definite a consciousness of the movement of the
fingers and of their change of positions as in the former
cases. In other words, the volition to move certain parts
is
accompanied by a mental condition which represents
to the consciousness the amount of motion, its force and
ideas of the change of place in the parts so willed to move.
The physiology of the day accepts the belief that all
of our accurate notions as to the amount of power put
forth, and as to the parts thus stirred, reach the sensorium
from the muscles acted on and the parts moved. It
would appear, however, from the statements here made,
as if coevally with the willing of a motion there came to
the consciousness, perhaps from the spinal ganglia acted
upon, some information as to these points. If, in reply
to this, I be told that the constancy of long habit may
have associated memorially with certain ganglionic activities
the ideas of local movements, I should hardly feel
that this was an answer, because in some of my cases the
amputations took place so early in life that there was
no remembrance pf the lost limb, and yet twenty years
after, a volition directed to the hand seemed to cause
movement which appeared to be as capable of detiuite
regulation, and was as plainly felt to occur as if it had
been the other arm which was moved. Probably, then, a
part of those ideas which we are presumed to obtain
through the muscular sense are really coincident with,