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Gunshot Wounds, and Other Injuries of Nerves
Gunshot Wounds and Other Injuries of Nerves Author:Silas Weir Mitchell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V. WOUNDS AND OTHER INJURIES OF NERVE TRUNKS. Before considering the lasting symptoms of injuries of nerve trunks, it will be well to point out the... more » varied modes in which these injuries arise. They may be thus classified:— 1st. Direct injury of nerve trunks by a missile, partial or complete division. 2d. Commotion from the near passage of a missile. 3d. Contusions, as from a blow. 4th. Injury resulting from dislocation, or attempts at its reduction. 5th. Cicatrix pressure. 6th. Extension of diseased processes from wounded nerves to those which are healthy. Class Ist. — Of direct sections or partial sections of nerves by a ball, no mention need be made at present, since so many of our after-cases will illustrate their character. Class 2o.—Injuries by commotion have been already discussed with reference to spinal lesions, and will be further exemplified under other headings. Three classes of nerve injury remain for brief examination. Class Sd.—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 I'Mectricite LocalisSe, 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 ultimate 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 4iH.—Injuries from Dislocations. Closely related to cases of commotion are those o...« less