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

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PATHOLOGY OF NERVE LESIONS. 57<br />

disappears with death, may depend some <strong>of</strong> the neural<br />

maladies which we are as yet forced to style functional.<br />

Any effort to lessen our ignorance on this subject should<br />

be indulgently received, <strong>and</strong> I have, therefore, felt justified<br />

in setting forth the following observations, incomplete<br />

though they be.<br />

When by any method we freeze or even chill the living<br />

tissues, the act <strong>of</strong> thawing is followed by more or less<br />

congestion. The nervous tissues are no exception to this<br />

law, <strong>and</strong> whether in brain, spine, or nerve trunk, congestion<br />

is sure to follow the return <strong>of</strong> warmth, <strong>and</strong> to occasion<br />

symptoms which vary with the neural region attacked.<br />

The changes <strong>of</strong> tissue, immediately due to the process <strong>of</strong><br />

congelation, have probably but little to do with these sequent<br />

conditions, because the symptoms in question hold a<br />

relation in time <strong>and</strong> severity to the amount <strong>of</strong> visible congestion,<br />

<strong>and</strong> arising with it are most intense when it is at<br />

its height. By means, therefore, <strong>of</strong> chilling <strong>and</strong> thawing<br />

a nerve, I have been able, as I believe, to produce con-<br />

in man its<br />

gestion with great certainty, <strong>and</strong> thus to study associated symptoms, <strong>and</strong> in animals the pathological<br />

traces which it leaves upon the nervous tissues.<br />

The sciatic, the pneumogastric, <strong>and</strong> the sympathetic <strong>of</strong><br />

the neck were, in animals, the <strong>nerves</strong> chosen for the purpose<br />

<strong>of</strong> pathological study. To effect congestion, no form<br />

<strong>of</strong> cold is so well fitted as that which, pr<strong>of</strong>iting by Dr.<br />

Richardson's<br />

atomizer, I have myself introduced among<br />

the methods <strong>of</strong> physiological <strong>and</strong> pathological research.<br />

When a jet <strong>of</strong> ether spray, or <strong>of</strong> rhigolene, which Dr. H.<br />

J. Bigelow first employed, <strong>and</strong> which I greatly prefer, is<br />

thrown upon the skin, as the part thaws the vessels become<br />

paralyzed, <strong>and</strong> a spot <strong>of</strong> deep congestion is left,<br />

which lasts, in my own case, for twenty-four hours or<br />

longer. The effect is still more striking when the membranes<br />

<strong>and</strong> tissue <strong>of</strong> the spinal cord are attacked. The<br />

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