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

CHAPTER IV.
PHYSIOLOGICAL PATHOLOGY OF NERVE LESIONS.
In the different
forms of mechanical injury of nerves,
a certain share of functional loss depends upon the cutting,
tearing, stretching, or bruising of nerve tubes which the
missile or weapon occasions. To this set of incapacitating
causes are soon added, in varying degrees and at more
and more remote periods, congestion, inflammation, and
sclerosis, so that the remote pathological consequences
are very often more serious than the primary hurt.
Because, in the study of symptoms and of the varieties
of nerve lesion, it becomes diflScult or impossible to discern
what are due to mechanical interference, and what to
the sequent pathological states, it is desirable to view these
latter separately, and also to study the process by which
an isolated nerve alters (degeneration), and that by which
in time it is repaired (regeneration). For whatever so
affects the nerve tubes as to annihilate their power to
carry impressions, whether this be mechanical, as a wound,
or a pathological state, such as inflammation or sclerosis,
inevitably dooms them to a gradual change, which results
first, in their partial destruction, and possibly, after a time,
in their more or less complete repair.
—
Congestion of nerves. Our clinical knowledge as to the
congestion of nerve trunks is so very limited that were
we asked to define the symptoms which indicate its exist--
ence, few pathologists would be ready with an answer.
Yet there can be little doubt that such a condition does,
often exist, and that upon this pathological state, which.
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