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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    DIVISION OP SUBJECT. When the U. S. A. Hospital for Diseases of the l!^ervous System was organized in May, 1863, it was at first proposed to limit its usefulness so that only those cases should be received. It soon became plain that it would be advisable to include also wounds and other injuries of nerves, and accord- ingly an order to that effect was issued. 'No sooner did this class of patients begin to fill our wards, than we perceived that a new and inter- esting field of observation was here opened to view. Before long, so many of these cases were collected that, for a time, they formed the majority of our patients. Among them were representatives of every conceivable form of nerve injury,—from shot and shell, from sabre cuts, contusions, and disloca- tions. So complete was the field of study, that it was not uncommon to find at one time in the wards four or five cases of gunshot injuries of any single large nerve. It thus happened that phenomena which one day seemed rare and curious, were seen anew in other cases the next day, and grew com- monplace as our patients became numerous. Whatever may be wanting in this essay is, there- fore, due alone to its authors, since never before in