LOST LIMBS ACHE

Evening Star, Issue 19762, 12 January 1928, Page 4

LOST LIMBS ACHE

A DOCTOR'S SENSATIONS. It is common knowledge that alter a limb lias bedn amputated the patient continues to feel pains or other sensations in the leg or arm that has been cut oil. Strictly speaking, tho sensations are illusions, but no less painful for that reason. In medical accounts of cases of amputation those “ false pains ” have been noted, but now, probably for (he first time, Ur Lobligeois, of Paris, has studied such a cose from a personal experience of tho phenomena, and given an account of his sations in ‘ Jto Monde Medical.’ Dr Lobligeois, in the course of his work as a radiologist at the Brctonneau Hospital, so injured his right arm with X-ray that it had to be amputated. He can hardly believe this arm is no longer attached to his body at times, ho writes, for his sensations are so strong and definite. Usually he feels the arm as if it were bent at the elbow and his hand resting between tho buttons of his waistcoat, as he was accustomed to rest it when it ached. lie can put it behind his back; but, strangely enough, he (hen has the feeling that the phantom arm goes right through his body, instead of around it! He can say exactly the position in which he fools his wrist and his fingers to he, and he often finds that lie lias involuntarily raised tho imaginary arm to help his less efficient left arm. The doctor describes oilier sensations—such as the feeling of opening or shutting tho lost hand—and, although these are not unpleasant, he has others—burning pains, cold shivers, and sharp pricking—that are hard to bear. The most convincing explanation of all these various illusions is that the nervous centres whihe furnished tire nerves to the severed member have remained in the stump, and these centres ran bo irritated by the tissue of the scar, and this irritation transmitted to the brain arouses, from habit, the image of that part of the body which the irritated nerves served.