WOODEN PAINS

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVII, Issue 237, 3 September 1927, Page 4

WOODEN PAINS

MISSING LEGS ACHE. DOCTOR EXPLAINS. SYDNEY, Aug. 24. How can a man have a pain in his wooden leg P How can you have a sore toe when you haven’t got any toes ? A case before the Workers’ Compensation Commission was mentioned recently., when an applicant complained of having to take medicine to alleviate pains in an artificial limb. The mystery was explained by a well-known Macquarie Street doctor to-day. “There is . nothing improbable about it,” he said. “On tho contrary, it is quite a common phenomenon. I have had lots of patients tell me, after their limbs have been amputated, that they can distinctly feci pains in fingers or toes which are actually ■ missing. . . “Perhaps the explanation can be better understood if you take as an analogy your ‘funny-bone, or ulna. It you strike vour elbow there, you can feel the shock in your finger. The sensation is transferred by the brain to the termination of the nerve in the halld ' MEMORIES. “Actually, the reason for feeling pains in limbs which are not there is that the sensory nerves convey sensations to the brain chiefly through stimulation of their end-organs, that is the disturbance is distributed to the terminations of the nerves. It is then conducted from the end-organ up the courso of the nerve to the brain. “If tho trunk of tho nerve in any part of its course is stimulated, a sensation is conveyed to the. brain which, from memories of experiences, is always referred by the brain to tho endorgans themselves, whether they, are there at the time or not. That is to say, the massed aggregation of memories of past pains in the toes or fingers may he revived by the disturbance of a nerve-channel which is still there, though tho actual end-organ may he missing.”