The healing of nerves / by Charles A. Ballance ... and Purves Stewart ... Illustrated by sixteen plates and one figure in the text.

  • Ballance, Charles A. (Charles Alfred), Sir, 1856-1936.
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The healing of nerves / by Charles A. Ballance ... and Purves Stewart ... Illustrated by sixteen plates and one figure in the text. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    muscles after an interval usually of about four weeks. This date, it will be observed, corresponds to that determined by us as necessary for the process of regeneration to occur. ‘The return of sensation was not recorded in our animals, owing to the difficulty of assuring ourselves of the trustworthiness of such observations. In one of our cases of transplantation of two inches of sheep’s sciatic nerve into a gap in the ulnar nerve in the human subject (Observation 368) sensation began to return twenty days after the operation, and was perfect six months later. It has long been known that the function of a nerve-trunk may, in certain cases, be restored if its cut ends be brought together, either immediately after the injury (primary suture) or after an interval of time has elapsed (secondary suture). In cases of primary suture, most surgical observers (Bowlby (3), Thorburn (34), and others) are agreed that restoration of function does not occur, as a rule, until two months after the primary suturing. The earliest possible date in the cat (according to our own observations), by which well-marked regeneration occurs, is four weeks. A large number of cases of secondary suture of nerves have been recorded, in which recovery has occurred. Sensation always returns before motor power in the affected nerve. Thus, so long ago as 1871, Jessop’s (15) case of ulnar paralysis of nine years’ duration is stated to have shown some return of sensation on the eighth day. In Langenbeck’s (20) case of ulnar paralysis of two and a half years’ duration, sensation is reported to have returned on the third day, and in Ogston’s (24) case of ulnar paralysis, sensation began to return in a week. In one of MacCormac’s (21)