Gunshot wounds and other injuries of nerves / by S. Weir Mitchell, George R. Morehouse, and William W. Keen.

Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Gunshot wounds and other injuries of nerves / by S. Weir Mitchell, George R. Morehouse, and William W. Keen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Class 3d.—Contusion of a nerve by a blow, the form of neural injury most common in civil practice, and one of the most apt to be permanent and serious in its effects, has been best studied by M. Duchenne, [De VEleciricite Localisee, Paris, 1862;) but many such cases, imperfectly reported, are on record in the great surgical text-books. Rarely grave in its first effects, a severe blow on a nerve is prone to give rise to ulti- mate consequences as fatal to functions as those which arise directly from a ball wound itself. Again and again there have come before us, too late for any ready relief, cases of this kind, which, had they been earlier understood, might possibly have been saved from many of the evils which followed. Class 4th.—Injuries from Dislocations. Closely re- ]ated>t.o cases of commotion are those obscure acci- dents to the brachial nerves, which arise from dis- locations of the humerus or attempts at reduction. Repeated instances of accidents belonging to Classes 3d and 4th have been seen by us. We select as illustrations the following cases:— Blow on left shoulder causing xmralysis of motion and sensation, with subsequent atrophy of the supinator longus, and extensors and flexors of the fingers. Flex- ors contracted. Case 12.—James Walton, set. 41, Ireland, sailor, enlisted June, 1862, Co. A, 115th Penn. Yols. At the second Bull Run battle, August 30, 1862, while lying on his belly in the woods, a shell, exploding in the air, cut off a large branch, Avhich, falling, struck him on the left shoulder, or rather across'the base of the neck. He grew dizzy, felt stunned, nnd lost consciousness. After a certain period, of whose duration he is ignorant, he revived to find that he had